I have decided

[Nicolette]

After much long hard thought I have decided to just change the current forms in my DB project and condense them into one form as recommended by some very helpful individuals on these forums.

I currently have one form to add new orders which fills in my tblOrderHeaders with the orderid, customerid, taxrate etc. and a second from that fills in my tblOrderDetails table with the individual items in the order. The second from has a combo box that allows me to select the OrderID that then auto populates the customers information which is strictly to allow me to verify that the order is being assigned to the right customer.

But I am at a loss as to where to start I am overwhelmed at this point.

My thoughts were that a form should open blank when I want to add a new order/invoice. which there is an apparent difference but I don't fully understand it yet I'm thinking it is an order is an unprocessed invoice at least in my thought process.

I understand the idea of filtering for order pending, shipped or invoiced. But what I'm wondering is should I use a continuous form that when first opened displays all? then have command buttons for adding new, modifying existing, etc.

I guess I'm looking for suggestions on the most efficient way to do this so hopefully all fingers crossed I don't have to redo it and further more I don't have to start from scratch.

Thank you in advance for all your insight and expertise on this matter.

 

[SteveSchapel]

Nicolette,

My answer here will be incomplete. One reason for this is that there are many ways to approach this, and which is right for you is not something that I or anyone else here has enough information to decide upon.

I can say that a very common design would have your OrderDetails form placed as a continuous view subform on the main Orders form.

And, in these types of scenarios, my own tendency would be to open the Orders form at a new blank record. And then in the form's Header section, an unbound combobox from which the user can select a previous existing order, in order to open that record if desired.

Hope those few brief comments will help you in your planning process.

 

[Nicolette]

thank you! Still working on it....

 

[debmars]

Hi Nicolette

I would open the form to the last record.

I have found in my business if Im working on a job which takes about a week that if I open the current record its generally the one I need in a certain week.

Having said that opening a form to a new record is good too.

I open up my details form first which opens to the last record. I have a button in that form that will open up a continuous form list from which I can make a quick selection and open up the details form to the order I need.

I also have a drop down combo box in my details form which lists all the orders and I can select one order that way which pops up the info details in seconds

Hope that helps

Cheers

Mars

 

[Nicolette]

it does thanks!

 

[debmars]

Nicole

I forgot to mention. Have you tried downloading the latest northwind sample database.
That has examples and code for exactly what you are trying to do. If you cant get it let me know and I will try and send it to you

Cheers
Mars

 

[Nicolette]

yeah i have got and i have looked at it but it is too much to follow and i keep getting lost I need a road map LOL!

 

[gray]

Hi

By coincidence I was just writing a comment in another thread.... if you are condensing all your forms onto one... watch out for this.... it caught me out when I did the same....

.... "I moved to use of subforms cos' I had reached the 'number-of-controls' limit on my main form... this is another 'feature'... it seems that whilst building a form, Access keeps a tally of the number of controls... but if you delete any it does not reduce the tally.... it doesn't take too long to reach the limit when one is developing ideas on forms"

I think I saw a limit of 255 written somewhere... this includes buttons and labels as well as 'real' controls... and the joy is that my form just kept crashing... I spent hours trying to figure out why.. invest in an abacus!

 

[Nicolette]

Thanks for the information! I had no idea there was a limit well that isn't totaly true i had read something about it but I had no idea how many.

 

[gray]

Hi

Sorry, the limit I mentioned is incorrect.... It's called the 'lifetime' limit and I just read that it's 754 (Access 2007).

When I hit this problem, I was advised to import my form into a blank database but this didn't work for me and it didn't appear to reset the limit (the trouble is that it may have been crashing for more then one reason!)... Someone has just given me another tip though...If you do hit this limit... try importing into a blank database and then re-importing it back...