Automatically add a Checklist to MS Access (1 Viewer)

As part of a blog I'm currently writing; I have done 5 videos (total running time -about half an hour) demonstrating how to add a checklist to MS Access.

Here is a link to a YouTube Play List of the 5 Videos...

Automatically add a Checklist to MS Access

For the few of us who still are capable of reading a text, care to define "add a checklist to MS Access database"?

spikepl said:

For the few of us who still are capable of reading a text, care to define "add a checklist to MS Access database"?

Click to expand...

A checklist is where you have a list of items. Next to each item you have a checkbox which you can change from true to false, thus defining that you have completed the item on the list.

For example a shopping list might have bread, milk, bacon, apples, oranges, potatoes, cabbage. As you go about your "Shopping" you would add a mark into the checkbox identifying that you had purchased a particular item.

The videos demonstrate how to create a list for each entity in your database. Assuming each entity will require the same Check List.

spikepl said:

For the few of us who still are capable of reading a text, care to define "add a checklist to MS Access database"?

Click to expand...

This is "what I wrote" - (Think Eric Morecambe) before composing the Video's

Sometimes you need a checklist in your MS Access database. You might be tempted to do this by creating a set of fields across in your table, however this is not considered good design. A better way would be to have a table with the check items individually listed in the table.

In this article I would like to demonstrate one method of achieving this. I will try and keep the terms I use to describe this process as general as possible, so that it is easy to relate to the structure in different circumstances.

In searching the Internet for checklists, it took me a while to find one that fitted my needs, unfortunately it was a "Wedding List". I apologise if my choice terrifies any gentlemen reading this.

The minimum number of tables required to make this work is 3 tables, I have given these generic terms: master, data and list. To explain the use of these tables I will refer to a specific case. Consider a business which manages weddings for couples.

In this case the master table "tblMaster" will contain details about the "wedding planners" customers.

The data table "tblData" will store the data for each individual customer.

Finally a table "tblList" that lists the "check off" items that need to be transferred to the data table "tblData".

The transfer of the list into the data table is performed by just two functions "Copy List" fCopyListToData, and "Append List" fAppendListToData. There are several other supporting functions in this example.

fCopyListToData puts the data from the list (tblList) into a recordset and then loops through the record set extracting the Row information from each field, then transfers that information via the function fAppendListToData into the data table "tblData".

"tblData" is what this code is about, it is this set of data that is created. Looking at the data table (tblData) we have five fields: dataID, dataLinkID, dataSets, dataItems and dataTickedOff.

dataID is not necessary and can be ignored.

dataLinkID is used to relate the values in this table (tblData) to the master table (tblMaster).

"dataSets" would not be necessary if you only had one set of data in your list. It is quite common to have a list divided into separate sets of information so in that instance it would be required and really for a single list with only one set, then you just add a "1" (or some other identifier) and treat it as if it was a set from a number of sets.

"dataItems" links back to the table list "tblList" and can be used to find the string value related to each item.

"dataTickedOff" is a boolean field which allows you to to flag whether a list item has been done, or not done.

I also produced these slides (presentation) on Google Docs:- | "List To Data" but felt they needed some extra explanation hence the first video, and then I thought what the hell ... do some more videos.

I'm now working on a set of videos showing how to add and display a set of multiple check Items.

My YouTube Playlist "Adding Multiple Checklists to MS Access" is now available...

spikepl said:

For the few of us who still are capable of reading a text, care to define "add a checklist to MS Access database"?

Click to expand...

Was that enough for you to read?

Was it clear enough?

Can i improve it?

which is better? --- Text or Video? Trick question --- the answer is... Horses for courses.. and of course whatever the presenter finds easiest...

Thank you. Sounds pretty useful. Useful enough to preserve for the posteriority, in one of the Reference fora here on AWF?

As to text vs video - I myself am too impatient for videos. With text I can skim it and quickly skip to what I want. But for the illiterate - and growing - Facebook generation, I guess it's videos or nothing .

spikepl said:

As to text vs video - I myself am too impatient for videos. With text I can skim it and quickly skip to what I want. But for the illiterate - and growing - Facebook generation, I guess it's videos or nothing .

Click to expand...

I am with you on the problem with videos. I watch a lot of videos myself, as I am trying to learn other programming languages at the moment its "Dart".

The main problem with videos as you have correctly identified is it is very difficult to skip through; especially if you have a very long video of half an hour or more.

I realized this early on when i started creating videos, so with my videos I endeavour to keep them to 5 minutes or less. However it is sometimes difficult!

The way I think about it is to assume a video represents a paragraph in text terms. The viewer can then pick out a particular video they want to view.

I also make sure I give a brief "Text" description of what is in each video "Paragraph", again to aid the viewer to the relevant bit. You can see some good examples of how I have done this on my MS Access Hints, Tips & Videos website, In particular this series of videos on How to "Lock" and "Unlock" Controls (from November 1, 2007)