Just a quick survery on best way to do a directory

[chellebell1689]

Hello,
I have been working on recreating my church's records from Alpha to Access. Today I wanted to work on the directory, and I'm not sure the best way to go about this. Our old directory is set up by family, with a family picture, address, anniversary, each member's name, birthday, and phone. Then we have a page that recognizes the staff, a page for the deacons, a page for those who do not have a picture, a page for corrections/new members, a page with the weekly schedule, a page for those who have moved away, and a page for those who have passed on. I wanted to add a couple pages for pictures from the previous year's events (we print this every year). Now the pages I'm sure I can just setup manually, but for the families how's the best way to go about this? I was thinking make a table with each family name and the family picture attach, but not sure how to do the members of each family.

Thank you in advance for your help, and let me know if you need more information.

 

[plog]

I was thinking make a table with each family name and the family picture attach,

Nope. First thing you need to do is seperate data storage from data presentation in your mind. They are 2 different things and your desired presentation shouldn't affect your data storage.

So, read up on normalization (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_normalization) and properly structure your tables. Then you move on to data presentation and all the ways to display it.

 

[chellebell1689]

Plog, you're wonderful! You're usually the one to answer my questions and you do it in such a helpful & learning way!

Is it possible to do the directory with that setup? Or should I create it in Word and have the information transfer over? (I tried looking at it to see what I could do with it.)

 

[plog]

I really don't know. From the sounds of what you are describing your directory is a document with various parts, which could be data driven. So it might be possible to use a Report in Access that has various sub-reports which are each section. It really depends on how complex and logical it all is.

 

[chellebell1689]

I don't know why I didn't mark this "Solved" that's how I did it, Thank you!