help with combo box selection being determined by entry in another field

[raistlin]

first of all, i'm new to access. the only experience i have with it is reading the "microsoft office inside out", access section, and doing some research on the web.

i work for a school district and my boss has asked me to make a database with all our assets. i used to have everything in excel, but he prefers access, so here i am. what i'm wanting help with is making a combo box that lists manufacturers like hp, dell, etc., and then having the next field show a list of models depending on what was selected in the manufacturers field. so if i select dell, i want only dell models to show up in the combo list for models.

i can make the combo lists, but i don't know how to make it so that the entry in one field affects the list in another field. i've tried putting in lookup values, i've tried doing it with expressions in queries, and a few other things. i've tried searching google, and the forums and i've found things that are kind of similar to what i want, but doesn't do exactly what i want. so here i am...is there a simple way to do this? this isn't required of me, but now it's driving me crazy because that's the way i'd like to have it but i can't figure it out.

i'd appriciate any help with this.
thanks.

 

[pbaldy]

The term you want to search on is "cascading" combos. You should find numerous methods.

 

[raistlin]

thanks, that pointed me more in the right direction. but all the topics that i've read about cascading combos have forms invovled, which has a spot where you can modify "after update", and i'm not seeing this option in table/query design. do i have to involve forms if i want to be able to do this?

 

[pbaldy]

Yes; most of us don't let users directly into tables anyway.

 

[raistlin]

ok, thanks for the help.