duplicate problem?

[sueviolet]

I have reading about duplicate records in serveral Access forums and am trying to figure out whether I have a serious problem.


A few examples:

Example # 1:


For example, users will enter into the "rivers" field which river they saw a fish (ie: Fraser river). There will be many observations for the fraser river.


So, under one field (ie: river) there will be many "Fraser" records. Each record would have a unique id.



Example # 2:

Main ID 17584 and 17526 have the same watershed code.


But 17526 is linked to record 1803 in table 2 and 17584 is linked to 1861 in table 2.

If I delete Main ID 17584 because it is a duplicate record - then how will I know what the watershed code is for record 1861 in table 1? It will be deleted if I delete duplicate records.

******

I find this all pretty confusing - if this is a serious problem, How do I solve it?

Thanks for your help

 

[pono1]

I know you're fine with the first example and suspect you're OK with the second as well, though I don't fully understand what's going on there.

It's perfectly OK, perfectly normal, for records in a table to have the same info in various fields, as long as each record in the table has at least one field value that is unique.

Say you want to keep track of furniture in your home. Each piece of furniture will be represented by one record (or row). One field in each record will be set as a primary key, which means no two pieces, no two records, will have the same value in this field.

Here's what some of your recs may look like in your table:

A Record
Field IDNumber = 1 (this will be a unique value within the table)
Field Description = Chair
Field Material = Wood
Field Style = Colonial
Field Location = Kitchen
Field Condition = Fair

Another record
Field IDNumber = 2 (this will be a unique value within the table)
Field Description = Chair
Field Material = Wood
Field Style = Colonial
Field Location = Kitchen
Field Condition = Crummy

Yet another record
Field IDNumber = 3 (this will be a unique value within the table)
Field Description = Bench
Field Material = Plastic
Field Style = Cheap
Field Location = Mudroom
Field Condition = Crummy

Notice that the first two recs are indentical other than the ID number and condition -- perfectly fine since you have two colonial style wood chairs in your kitchen. If, later, you decide you want to see a list of just your crummy furniture, then you can create and run a query to show you just those recs with the word "crummy" in their condition field.

Duplicate records are those that have every field value exactly the same, including the Primary field -- chaos that Access helps you avoid when you format a field in each table as a primary key.

Hang in there -- it's easier than you might think.

Regards,
Tim

 

[sueviolet]

Thanks for taking the time to reply and explain things

I feel better now