General Form Question

[aml5171]

Hi all,

I have been creating a database for my company to capture "open exposure" for oil rigs we insure across our entire portfolio. I have created the tables and set up the database (poorly at best), but our goal is to be able to compare and analyze different data points across the portfolio (i.e. total limit, location, coverage type, etc.)

Now that I have the database set up and am beginning to fill it with our data I was wondering if from the end user point of view is it possible to set up forms so there are drops downs with things like "vesselName", "productType", "location" etc. Ultimately, what we would like to be able to do is have the users select different criteria and then run a query on said criteria such as "Total Exposure" (would need to run a sum here i think) for all "Vessels" in the "North Sea".

I have been able to set up a few queries to run searches like this but that is not easy enough for the people in the office to quickly run different searches as they will constantly be looking for different things. Any suggestions or guidance would be greatly appreciated.

I am a novice access user but have been finding enough information from various forums and tutorials, especially this one, and think i just need a push in the right direction to get to where i need to be.

Thanks in advance for any advice and help as it is much appreciated.

Attached is my database so far. I still need to do alot of work on it as well as upload the data but figured I would attach it.

 

[themurph2000]

Hi all,

I have been creating a database for my company to capture "open exposure" for oil rigs we insure across our entire portfolio. I have created the tables and set up the database (poorly at best), but our goal is to be able to compare and analyze different data points across the portfolio (i.e. total limit, location, coverage type, etc.)

Now that I have the database set up and am beginning to fill it with our data I was wondering if from the end user point of view is it possible to set up forms so there are drops downs with things like "vesselName", "productType", "location" etc. Ultimately, what we would like to be able to do is have the users select different criteria and then run a query on said criteria such as "Total Exposure" (would need to run a sum here i think) for all "Vessels" in the "North Sea".

I have been able to set up a few queries to run searches like this but that is not easy enough for the people in the office to quickly run different searches as they will constantly be looking for different things. Any suggestions or guidance would be greatly appreciated.

I am a novice access user but have been finding enough information from various forums and tutorials, especially this one, and think i just need a push in the right direction to get to where i need to be.

Thanks in advance for any advice and help as it is much appreciated.

Attached is my database so far. I still need to do alot of work on it as well as upload the data but figured I would attach it.

If people only need to type criteria for one field in a particular query, you can set up a parameter query. It's a query that won't ask for the criteria until it is actually run; that way, you don't have to go into Design View every time to change the criteria.

Wherever you want the criteria to be, you type a sentence surrounded by square brackets.

[Please enter a type of product.]

When your user runs the query, Access will ask them that question, at which point they can type in whatever it is they're seeking.

 

[aml5171]

themurph,

thank you very much this is very useful and simple to implement. from a form or report standpoint do i just simply select my newly revised queries with the parameters and create them from that or can i use parameters specifically within forms for the users to choose? again any help is appreciated and thanks for your time and input.

 

[themurph2000]

themurph,

thank you very much this is very useful and simple to implement. from a form or report standpoint do i just simply select my newly revised queries with the parameters and create them from that or can i use parameters specifically within forms for the users to choose? again any help is appreciated and thanks for your time and input.

Either or. You can have your users open the query in question, at which point it will ask the user to type in the criteria, like I spelled out before. You can also have a blank form with text boxes on it to specify criteria. In that instance, for the criteria in the query, you say [Forms]![MyForm]![textboxonmyform] or whatever you called that text box.