can't choose style for forms

[carpe_annum]

Hi,

I am creating my very first Access database so sorry for the newbie-ish question...

What can I do if Forms won't allow me to choose any style but the default? I'm worried that this suggests I'll run into other glitches as I continue to develop the database, not to mention the inconvenience of not being able to format forms the way I want to.

More details if you need them:

I have set up and related a number of tables. Am very excited that I finally seem to have grasped the proper use of keys and some modest lookup queries for some fields.

I then tried to create a form but get an error in the wizard just before getting to the select style box. A dialog box comes up saying there's an error in an SQL statement. When I click 'OK', the same box comes up. Click 'OK' again and a final box comes up saying there's been an error. Click 'OK' and the select style box comes up - but there are no styles from which to select. I can go on to create the form as long as I don't care about using the default style. (I didn't write down the SQL statement, although it does end with something like Stylesheet "IsNull". I can get the statement later in the day if that would be helpful.)

Same problem occurs in Design View. I have repaired Office, reinstalled Office and removed and then reinstalled Office, all to no avail (are you experts rolling your eyes yet?). Form Wizard works fine in Northwinds Database. Could I have screwed something up by creating a poorly written query in lookup? I can't imagine that having an effect on Forms! Is it possibly a memory issue?? What else can I try?

Thanks,
Linda

 

[sstreet]

There is most likely a problem in your query, which is making it too difficult for access to run and therefore it cannot create a form based on the query. Have you tested the query?

 

[carpe_annum]

Umm, do you mean have I checked to make sure it does what I think it will? Yes. Have I tested it with a tool of some kind? No. What test do you recommend? Or if you just want to point me toward a tutorial, that would be great, too. I find Access Help to be a frustratingly slow way to learn to do things...

Many thanks for the prompt response!

Linda

 

[sstreet]

I mean have you checked that the lookup queries actually run on their own (maybe a stupid question, but you never know)?

Can you upload the database, then I can take a proper look.

 

[carpe_annum]

Hi,

Sorry about the long silence - I've got broadband at home and only dial-up at the office, which is where the database is. I haven't figure out how to copy the database so that I can actually make changes to it, so I have to do all the work there - and so far, every time I have tried to upload it, the process has failed - I get booted off the forum.

On the good news side of things, after reading your advice I went back and studied my lookups more carefully. I'd copied them from the NorthWinds database and had made errors somehow (who, me??). I reconstructed the database and the lookups, forms and reports work fine. Thank you for your insights!

I'd still love to upload it and get your comments. I finally realized I was making things too complicated so have restructured the database (again!) to a much simpler version. We buy and sell houses, so I am trying to track both prospects and what happens to the houses while we own them, not to mention how much money we make (or don't make) on them. So I have a (potentially) large table of prospects (sellers & their houses) then a much smaller subset of houses we actually buy (then resell, maybe renovating and renting them out in the interim). I tried to use one-to-one relationships to make the purchased houses a subset of the prospective ones. However, I kept running into trouble with entering data, getting one error message after another, and I finally just gave up and put it all in one table. After all, we're still only talking about dozens, not thousands, of houses.

Does that seem like a reasonable solution or should I try to understand the behavior of the one-to-one relationships better?

Thanks for any advice you care to offer!
Linda

 

[sstreet]

It's hard to say without analysing the tables in more detail, but take at look at this page, which describes the relationships and when they should be used: Simply Access .

I think basically, unless you have more than 255 fields or the data is being duplicated, then it should stay in one table.