I have a table that stores contact info for projects: clients and such. I used just a text box in the table to enter the company name, and of course there is wide variation in data entry: lots of companies repeat. Is there any way I can change the text box to a combo box, so people can choose a company from a list or add a new one, without losing any information? Will the table analyzer do this?

Thank you,
Margaret

Are the users entering data straight into the table or via a form?

If they're using a form I prefer to leave the table that way and then setup a combobox on the form whose control source is the corresponding field in the table.

They enter the data in a subform, to be exact. The idea is they'll choose a company name from the combo box, then enter the other contact data. There are all sorts of combinations of companies, contacts and projects, so I am worried about referential integrity problems. Do I need to make the "company name" a table of its own?

Thank you,
Margaret

A table of it's own... well that depends. Are there going to be multiple projects, contacts for each company? If so, then yes it would be a good idea to setup a separate table with a one-to-many relationship.

Many projects, many companies, many people within those companies working on many projects. I had tried to branch people off from a companies table (one to many), and link the companies to Projects (many to many) and nothing worked. All I need now is a standardized list of names for people to choose from to reduce data entry flubs, and aid in searching. I'll try the combo box for now, and manually fix the variation in the current records.

Thanks for your help,
Margaret