Forms of a one to many

[OZmc]

I am new to access, but pretty computer savvy.

Goal: record and track daily parameters of individual animal enclosures.

Setup:
table of "animal enclosures"
table of "things i want to record"

relationships:
one animal enclosure will have MANY records of things i want to record

form:
want to make a form that cycles through the different enclosures and allows the user to record the information in a simple form interface.

The problem:
I don’t like the look of sub form table. Its confusing to less computer savvy people. I want one single form that pulls the names of the "animal enclosures" and fills in a new record below in linked table. the little (+) button in the table.

when i create a form from "animal enclosures" it creates forms and I can click next through all the different pages containing the animal names. but once i add existing fields from the "things i want to record" table It only records information in the first entry of "animal enclosures".

Hopefully that makes sense...

should I set up things differently? do I have to use a subform?

 

[OZmc]

here is my file to look at View attachment Reptile_Logs.zip

 

[plog]

I'm not really sure about the issue you are having now is exactly, but you have problems bigger and more pressing than setting up forms. Your table structure is not normalized.

You should not store information specific to the data within the names of fields or tables. That means you should not have tables called Herp_Log_snakes, Herp_Log_lizards and Herp_log_tort. Instead you should have one table called Herp_Log with the type of animal each record is for as its own field. You have the same issue with all your _diet tables. You need one diet table.

Strike that actually, what do all those diet tables do? You have a diet field in all your Herp_Log tables so whats the point of those tables?

In your compile_log table you are using the Name_ID field to link to another table. You should use the ID field. You also have a field called 'Date' and another called 'Time'. These are bad field names because they are reserved words in access and will give you trouble when referencing them. Also, you don't need 2 fields for this information you just need one Date/Time field.

Fix your structural issues then we can talk about Forms and Reports.

 

[OZmc]

Ha, ok thanks.

 

[OZmc]

OK I made the changes you sugested. I made two forms to discribe my problem.

One form "ideal" shows what Im trying to do, but the data doesnt fill in properly.

another "works but dont like" uses a subform. which works just fine, but the interface is less clean, and can be confusing for some of my older users.


Hopefully you can see what im trying to achive. but bassically i want to fill out a series of forms for each record, each day. The users arent used to excel interfaces so a subform isn't ideal.

Is something like this possible?

View attachment Reptile_Logs_1.zip

 

[plog]

You fixed the multiple table issue, but you didn't correct the others ('Date' and 'Time' field names, Combining those 2 fields into 1, using the ID from Herp_logs in compile_log).

However I do see what you want with your forms. You are using a table as your sub-form, you should make a form as your sub-form. This will allow you control over how it looks. You could make it look just like your desired form.

 

[OZmc]

Ok I think i got the majority of it working now. Thanks for the help. a subform of a form was exactly what I was looking for.

For some reasoon the date picker (even though it is set to general date) is not recording a time with it. I cant seem to find a setting to get it to record a date and a time:

12/12/12; 5:45pm

View attachment Reptile_Logs.zip

 

[OZmc]

Nevermind i got it. I just created a button and used the [TimeStampField] = Now() command