Best approach for organizing files in box

[miguelito_cz]

OK, here goes another question regarding my project. Short intro: the project is about organizing boxes and files in them. Each box has 250 slots, each slot for one file. I'm using Access 2003.

In one of my tables each record represents a file stored on a specific position [SlotID] in one of the boxes [BoxID]. When there's no file in a slot, there's no record about it. I'm trying to find out the best way for a user to manage the files. My idea is for a user to be able to effectively reorder, edit or delete a file or multiple files. Does anyone have an idea on the best approach to do this kind of management? Like controls used, form design and so one.. Any suggestions appreciated!

 

[hk1]

I recommend you try to narrow your question. I don't think you're going to get a lot of help with a question that is so broad. There's probably quite a few here that could write your program for you but I doubt that anyone is going to offer to design this for free. Having said all that, I'll go ahead and add my two bits about the design.

For the most part, your form design is a direct result of your table design. It's true that sometimes you have to start on the front end, especially with reports and forms, to get an idea what data the user needs to see or have output. However, once you've answered that question your table design is very critical. Once the tables are designed you'll probably have only a few good options on designing the management screen.

I would suggest using two listboxes to select the box and the file. Then I would create a datasheet view subform to hold the records contained in each file. When the user selects a box and a file you need to update/filter the subform to display the contents of that file. You could possibly put this subform in a second form (suggest a popup form) so that the user has to close it out to navigate to a different box/file. If you're screens are large enough this might not be necessary.

I think I would suggest writing a routine that automatically creates 250 records for every box you enter/create. However, if you're managing thousands of boxes this could make your database get fairly large, especially if only a small fraction of those 250 files are actually in use.

You can easily change the recordsource on the second listbox to show only files that are empty or only have items in them.