Blank Fields in forms

[StephenSLR]

I am setting up a form with a few tables in it.

I want each table to relate to the form.

When the Next button at the bottom of the page is clicked I want all the values of each table recorded even if there were no values put in the boxes.

For example if there is no value added to the field boxes in say half the tables I want the default value to be recorded as blank or zero so that each table has the same Autonumber associated with the other tables in the form.

What is the best way to do this?

s

 

[Pat Hartman]

I'm having a lot of trouble trying to figure out what you are trying to do. Can you explain in business terms what you are trying to accomplish rather than trying to explain the solution.

 

[StephenSLR]

I'm having a lot of trouble trying to figure out what you are trying to do. Can you explain in business terms what you are trying to accomplish rather than trying to explain the solution.

I'll explain my situation.

I'm a graduate engineer and it is slow at the office so the boss is looking for things for me to do.

The IT guy has given me some spreadsheets and he has been putting off designing a database with them in mind because he is inundated with other work.

He is not sure if it can be done or if it will even be a good idea.

I don't exactly know what he is trying to accomplish.

To give me some work to do he has given me the spreadsheets to play around with and he may get some ideas from what I come up with.

I have done a course on MS Access which was focussed on flat file databases.

When I get a better idea I can tailor better questions but so far from what I have been doing I've been learning quite a bit.

s

 

[Pat Hartman]

I have done a course on MS Access which was focussed on flat file databases.

Access is a relational database. dBASE is a flat file as is Excel.

It is unlikely that you want to import the spreadsheets as they are now. You will need to get some understanding of normalization to know how the spreadsheets must change to become relational data. At a very high level - spreadsheets are wide and short because they take new data and add it as columns. Relational tables are narrow and long because data is added as rows. There is an article at www.fmsinc.com which has a pretty good explaination of the conversion of a spreadsheet to a set of tables. Take a look at the other articles while you're there.

Access uses bound forms. If you use a wizard to build a form for you, it will ask for a recordsource which can be a table or a query. The wizard will build a form in the style you choose with all the fields from the recordsource. This form will allow you to add/change/delete records without doing anything else or writting any code or setting any properties which sort of answers your first question.

 

[StephenSLR]

There is an article at www.fmsinc.com which has a pretty good explaination of the conversion of a spreadsheet to a set of tables. Take a look at the other articles while you're there.

Thanks for that, it is a big site. Is it in the 'tips' section?

s

 

[Pat Hartman]

Resources/Technical papers- there are two articles on normalization. Read both.

http://www.fmsinc.com/tpapers/index.html = Technical papers link