Extended forms

[lemon_balm]

I am creating a form based directly on some paperwork which needs to be logged electronically, Unfortunately this extends well over the 55" that Access allows for a form.
Not a problem I thought, just create a second form and place a continuation button on the first...Obviously not.
When I place information on the second form, it throws a new record in the table meaning that the table ends up twice the required size and half the records have one side of the data and the rest is on the other side.
What do I need to do to sync these together properly?

Regards

Jason

 

[RuralGuy]

Hi Jason,
Trying to force a Relational Database into what someone did on a piece of paper is often times a loosing proposition. It generally requires rethinking the problem in terms of what a RDB does best. That means normalization of the data. With most RDB's you need to think tall and thin and *not* short and wide. That means many tables with few fields rather than few tables with lots of fields. Search this forum for "normalization" and you will get lots of hits and way more to read than you want. I resisted responding because of the news I had to provide but both of your posts indicate you have a database structure problem and will keep having problems until you normalize the tables. Good luck. Post back if you come up dry and I can find some links for you to review.

 

[lemon_balm]

Firstly, a sorry to Pat. I got logged out whilst posting my initial post so I reposted only to find that the forum had in fact accepted it.
Anyway,
thanks for the reply RuralGuy. I appreciate that as data goes, the form I am creating will not seem very normalised. The issue however is more to do with not confusing the staff. The data being input is only of relevance to itself except for the fact that it is there and the contractor has agreed it. The idea is that our temp answering the phones can log this data whilst waiting for the phone to ring. Because of this I have attempted to make it look just like the actual paperwork that they will be copying off of. As stated above, the problem is that access will only let you have a limited amount of form length meaning that the form needs to carry over onto a second page. I don't really want to have to create a seperate table to back the second half of the form but this is the only way I can think to synchronise it.
As tables go, this one isn't that large. There are 54 fields of which 20 are Memo boxes for comments and 18 are Yes/No to ascertain if a contractor understands the issues being asked of him/her. The rest are fields to store names, datse, job descriptions, workforce numbers and such.
Data wise, the only things that will be referenced other than for display purposes are the primary key "chk2ID" and the contractor Identifier "ctrID"
IS there any way I can have a continuation to a second form or will I need to create a second table and split out the data, linked by the primary key?

Regards

Jason

 

[RuralGuy]

Look into the Tab Control. It can really allow you to put a great deal of controls in a very small space on your form. Each tab could hold a different memo field for example. Using SubForms on each tab would allow you to have an equal number of different tables if needed. I believe you would benefit by reading up on normalization. The concept of atomic data helps greatly when you attempt to retrieve some of it.