Linking Tables without duplicating data

[MrMacs]

Hi all. I'm new to the forum and have some limited Access experience. I took a beginner and intermediate class for Access 2010 about 6 months ago and haven't really put it to use until I started working on this new project. I appreciate any help you can give this newbie.

I have two tables that I'm struggling with how to relate to each other. One is tblHardware which contains all the items that we sell. There are no duplicates in this table. The only columns are a part #, description, long description, and cost.

Then I have another table with is tblPackages. These are the packages we sell which pull from tblHardware. This one just has an autonumber, description, and image (image I'll add later and not worried about now).

What I'm struggling with is how to tie these two together because one Package will contain multiple items from Hardware however there are multiple Packages that have the same Hardware items (17" monitor for example).

Appreciate any help you can throw my way.

 

[pbaldy]

You have tables with a many-to-many relationship (a package can contain many items, an item can be in many packages). Typically a junction table is used. It would have the key value from the package table and the key value from the hardware table as fields, plus typically an autonumber field of its own for the key. If a given package had 3 items in it, there would be 3 records in that table.

 

[MrMacs]

Thanks Paul! I hadn't worked with many-to-many relationships before but just put it together as you mentioned and works like a charm.

I'm sure I'll be back with more questions as I work on this sales quoter for my company.

 

[pbaldy]

No problem, and welcome to the site by the way!