(Help!) Query on Values in Combo Boxes

[scarlo]

I just started using Access a couple weeks ago. I bought a couple books, have read some help stuff in forums webwide, but I am still stuck on the basics of how to do the following~ Please Help ~

My DB:
I have a single main table, in addition there are several mini-tables used to support combo boxes for form inputing.

My Mission:
It's been requested of me that My Main Switchboard have an option to lead to a secondary form where the end-user can "quick-filter" records to generate a table or report based upon dropdowns and check boxes for 9 different search variables- the data will then be pulled from the original data table based on the 9 choices (or less, as there will be often certain variables left blank).

My Questions:
1) how do I tie the values from the combo boxes in my new form to supportive queries? (perhaps a parameter query with a macro that searches that particular combo box for values??) - or is there a better way to do this?
2) how do I tie all those queries together so that some of the 9 choices can be blank, and of the others the assurance that they'll stack- or further refine the results.
3) one of the search criteria is Industry Sector. there is a mini-table to provide the values for the drop-down, but in the main table there are four columns in case a particular company falls into more than one sector. will this present any problem or can a query be easily tailored to search any of those four columns for that value?

I want to thank anyone who cares to help very much, in advance. I know my issues probably seem very simple, but I've been tasked this duty of learning Access and working the company's DB on my own. The "comprehensive" books that I've purchased haven't seemed to clarify this particular issue, so here I am.

 

[garabito]

I don't have all the answers to your questions but here's some help (hope it's useful)

1) You can link your forms to the queries by including the form field name in the query. In your query, in the criteria field you include the reference under the column you need. Suppose I need to link the column Location to a field in a form, then I include: [Forms]![frmReportParameters]![cmbBudgetLocation].

2) You can write some code for the afterupdate even in the field in the form so that in case it is blank you can include a wildcard for the query, or whatever you need.

3) Is the database normalized?

 

[scarlo]

Thanks Garabito, I'm trying to use custom functions now to reference fields from the form in my master query (which includes all the 9 fields).

I believe the database is not normalized, that is I have done no setup to reduce redundancy.

 

[scarlo]

Ok, thanks a lot for the help.