Drop-down box

[jimmonator]

I am a complete novice to Acess, and although I have built some complex structures in the past, they have been in Filemaker pro, with no overt references reference to SQL, or VBA. I tend to see the objects as the data, even though I know it not to be strictly true. Anyway:

When I follow intructions for a "drop down box," what I get is a list box showing the rows of the related table. I want to see only the top row, and have the others "drop down" when I click on it, and be able to drag/scroll down the lis to the needed record. I want it to be a menu, really.

Upon selecting the needed record, I want to see a separate popup, or subform, like a second browwer window, which displays the entire record (row) selected. I should be able to close this and return to the main form just by clicking a close button.

I hope you can help me out. I just can't see how to make this function like a menu.

Jim

 

[PaulO]

For the first part of your problem it sounds like you've created a LIST box when what you need is a COMBO box

You could then build a SELECT query that points at the selection made in the combo box to select and display the required record

 

[CBrighton]

I agree with PaulO, a combobox is what you need. This is the generic drop-down you see for gender, title (Mr, Mrs, etc) and other similar things.

With regards to the rest, you can certainly have it opening new forms, etc when you select something in the combobox, but this will require some VBA.

Fortunately, it's a useful thing to learn if you are working with Access and the basics are fairly... well, basic.

For example, if you wanted to open a form when a record was selected you could set the after update event of the combobox to:

DoCmd.OpenForm "[B]FormName[/B]"

Where the bolded part would be replaced with the name of the form to open.

All you need to do now is create the second form, then bind it to a query which uses the combobox as criteria. That or add a filter arguement to OpenForm.