Combo Box/List Box - Bound/Unbound

[Gwen61]

Trying to make a couple of "drop-down lists." I know they have to be bound, because the ones I made were unbound, and when something was selected in the list for one row, it populated all the other rows, too.

However, I'm stuck trying to figure out how to do it. I've searched the Internet for instructions that make sense to me (an Access novice), but I'm not able to find anything.

How do I know if I want a Combo Box or a List Box?

Can both be bound?

How do I get them to be bound?

Do I need to make a separate table for the items in the list?

Does anyone have a link that gives simple step-by-step instructions?

 

[Gwen61]

Nevermind! I've spent hours on this, which is why I finally posted. Wouldn't you know, I just figured it out!

 

[gemma-the-husky]

all part of the learning curve

combo boxes /list boxes can be bound or unbound - depends what you want to use them for.

with an bound one, it is just a method for storing a (numeric say) value in the table, that REALLY represents something else - by storing the numeric value as a lookup it
a) makes the dbs storage a little less (because you store a number rather than a string)
b) and therefore also makes it more efficient for sorting/joining etc
c) more importantly, by limiting choices to certain values, prevent build up of "strange values" that would be caused by mistyping and
d) also enables yuo to change the looked up value more easily

with an unbound combo box, you need to do something AFTER you make a selection (or else the combo box has no point - perhaps to filter the data on the form, or to affect choices in another combo box (cascading combo boxes) - so typically you are very likely to use the after update event to process the selection in some way

 

[Simon_MT]

I have so many of these lookups I have to manage them. I Don't care to enumerated values, strings will do me OOC Oil on Canvas everyone understands.

I never use a list boxes, I now have tables containing different lookup categories along with supporting Queries and (on Enter) rowsource declarations within VB.

I broke my database so I had to be more efficient.

Simon