Help With Form

[mbpaul]

Hi,
I am working on designing a database to track equipment maintenance. One of the things that I need to do is have an easy way of updating the hours from 250+ pieces on a daily basis. I have a form design (see attached photo) that is linked to the equipment list with all the information I need. What I want to do is have the ability to type the unit number and updated hours in the header, hit a button or enter, and have it automaticly fill in the fields in the database. I also would like it to autochange the date in the 'updated' colum to the date it was updated. Any help I can get on this would be much appreciated.

 

[MarkK]

Typically in a database you want to add a record rather than update one. So if you need to record machine hours as they occur, I would expect to see a MachineHours table that links to a machine. In that table you record the hours on the date they occurred, and then you shouldn't "autochange" the "LastUpdate" field, but rather, you read the latest date from the table where those hours are recorded, for that machine.

Here's an example of how I would want to determine the LastUpdate date for the 1234 machine . . .

LastUpdate = DMax("MachineHoursDate", "MachineHours", "MachineID = 1234")

What data do you need to completely describe an object or event? Add a record and store that data. Query that data to find out what happened, and when, and so on.
hth