David R
I know a few things...
- Local time
- Yesterday, 20:03
- Joined
- Oct 23, 2001
- Messages
- 2,633
I'm having a difficult time wrapping my brain around elegant solutions to this problem, so I thought I'd come here and see what anyone else thought.
In a new part of the database, there is a Strategic Plan objective that should be linked to the Task in the main table/form. I have a reference table with the actual objectives, but when I try to combobox/listbox them into the form, the data is too long (~80-150 characters) to fit on one line. From everything I've read, comboboxes and listboxes cannot include carriage returns, so I am not sure how to make this 'readable' to the user.
My initial solution involved populating a textbox with the choice once the user has selected something, so they can see the full text. This is confusing, however, as they expect to have to enter/edit something in that field, and it takes up 2x as much space on my form.
My second thought was to place a subform of some type on the form, with text labels on option buttons. Only one option needs to be selected; however there is now an additional Core Values goal that needs to be chosen similarly. All of a sudden one table (tableTasks) with one reference table (tableStrategicPlan) has become five: tableTasks, tableStrategicPlan, tableCoreValues, tableTaskValue (linkage for many-many relationship, behind one subform), and tableTaskPlan (linkage for the many-many relationship behind the other subform). I feel certain that I am making this harder than it has to be, but I am not sure where. Because of the length of the list, subforms seems to be the only way to get 'miniscrollbars' on the form, unless there's a feature of Access I am missing. A popup form had occurred to me as well, but maybe you all have a better idea.
Thanks in advance,
David R
In a new part of the database, there is a Strategic Plan objective that should be linked to the Task in the main table/form. I have a reference table with the actual objectives, but when I try to combobox/listbox them into the form, the data is too long (~80-150 characters) to fit on one line. From everything I've read, comboboxes and listboxes cannot include carriage returns, so I am not sure how to make this 'readable' to the user.
My initial solution involved populating a textbox with the choice once the user has selected something, so they can see the full text. This is confusing, however, as they expect to have to enter/edit something in that field, and it takes up 2x as much space on my form.
My second thought was to place a subform of some type on the form, with text labels on option buttons. Only one option needs to be selected; however there is now an additional Core Values goal that needs to be chosen similarly. All of a sudden one table (tableTasks) with one reference table (tableStrategicPlan) has become five: tableTasks, tableStrategicPlan, tableCoreValues, tableTaskValue (linkage for many-many relationship, behind one subform), and tableTaskPlan (linkage for the many-many relationship behind the other subform). I feel certain that I am making this harder than it has to be, but I am not sure where. Because of the length of the list, subforms seems to be the only way to get 'miniscrollbars' on the form, unless there's a feature of Access I am missing. A popup form had occurred to me as well, but maybe you all have a better idea.
Thanks in advance,
David R
