Question Creating a product catalog in Access 2007

[MortenBrix]

I’m new to MS Access and need some help for creating a product catalog over a range of products.

I want to create a catalog where each page of the catalog contains a product, describing; Performance data, pictures of the product, technical drawings, and documents on the product e.g.

Also it should be possible to search in the performance data, so that one or more parameter from all products can be compared used for benchmarking the products to each other.

I am using the 2007 version, because it’s the one that I have available at the current time. My questions are mostly related to the possibilities of creating such a product in Access 2007, or if I need to upgraded to a newer version or even use another software program?

I have tried to find templates for such a database but I haven’t found anything like what I have described here above.

Hope someone can help me getting started the right way

 

[CJ_London]

First you need to get your tables sorted out.

Since you have many requirements there are a number of ways this can be done.

I would have a product table with say:
 
ID    ProductCode    ProductDesc  PerformanceData1    PerformanceData2
and either a sub table containing links to other documents
 
ID    ProductID    DocumentLink
 
which links productID back to ID in the product table
Documentlink is a text field containing the path and file name of the document (recommend these are all stored in a common location)

Alternatively, if you can change the name of attachments you could simply store these all in a common location with the product ID as part of the file name, then use the Dir funtion to find the ones relevant to the product you are reviewing and open as required

 

[MortenBrix]

Okay so i need to create a table for each product? For this i could just make a template that can fit all the products and use it for all the products? Is that right?

Getting photos and drawings to be shown of the products on each page is that an easy task? or do i need to do something special to be able to do this?

When having developed the table for the products, then i can create queries on the data afterwards, or do i need to do something special to be able to do this when creating the tables?

Thanks for the help so fare

 

[CJ_London]

Okay so i need to create a table for each product? For this i could just make a template that can fit all the products and use it for all the products? Is that right?

No, one table for all products

Getting photos and drawings to be shown of the products on each page is that an easy task? or do i need to do something special to be able to do this?

Can be because they often vary in dimensions - use an OLE Object type field
and on the form set to zoom

When having developed the table for the products, then i can create queries on the data afterwards, or do i need to do something special to be able to do this when creating the tables?

yes, nothing special required but a few rules:

1. Avoid giving fields a name which are reserved (common are name, date) here is a link http://office.microsoft.com/en-gb/a...7-reserved-words-and-symbols-HA010030643.aspx
2. Ensure you have an ID autonumber field to uniquely id the record
3. You can set the primary key to the productname field to ensure you do not get duplicate product names
3. Useful to include a timestamp field with the default set to now() so you know when a record was actually inserted

 

[stopher]

Just to add...

If all your products are the same then the stucture CJ suggests will work fine e.g. all products are computers and therefore the metrics that you record for each product will be the same.

Where it gets difficult is when your products are different e.g. washing machines, microwave ovens, dish-washers. You still want to have a single product table but clearly having a column for every possible metric for all possible products would be unworkable. In this instance you need a second table to store metrics. Something like this:

ProductID___MetricName____MetricValue
washer123____Spin Rate_______3000rpm
washer123____Wattage________200w
Oven234______Hobs___________4
Oven234______Max Temp______240c
Oven234______Self Clean_______Yes

By doing this you can easily provide all the data necessary for many product types with only two tables and a small number of fields. You can also pre-empt the metrics so that when Oven234 was created, the appropriate metrics for an over where also created albeit with blank metric values.

This structure makes it easy to search or filter of any range of metrics.

hth
Chris

hth
Chris

 

[maggiedon]

Well, good information for me, i also need create product catalogue,and found some tutorials from website, one is to tell me how to create e catalogue from PDF by using Kvisoft Flipbook Maker Pro software, different from product catalog, i need two, thanks for all!

 

[merryflip]

well, nice of you to share with us. actually i also met across the same problem, and find some useful tips from the website, it's really advisable to use xFlip online catalog software to create online product e-catalog from excel files, but also make online brochures, online magazines and digital catalog from Word, PDF, PPT, Image etc files