Noob question about forms

[CaptainWilly]

Sorry to bother you guys with a noob question, but I don't know where else to go. I have a little experience with Access, but not with forms. What I need to do is this:

I have a table of account numbers and a table of regions. I need to create an interface for a user so that he can search for account numbers and associate them with a region. So he might search for "321" and see a list of account numbers containing "321". He would then be able to visually scan through the list and mark certain ones as belonging to "region 1", others as "region 2", etc.. The selected region would be stored in a column the account numbers table.

I know this is a noob question, but I have no experience with forms. If you don't have time for a detailed answer, please just point me in the right direction with some terms that might help me find the right place in my Access book.

Thanks in advance!

 

[Jeanette Cunningham]

Build a continuous form with the account number and the region as columns in the form.
Put a dropdown for the region.
On each row of the form the user can choose the correct region for each account.

If you are new to forms, this may not be easy or straight forward. Post back with your questions as you build the form.

 

[CaptainWilly]

Thanks, Jeanette. I am trying it now.

 

[CaptainWilly]

Thanks for the response, but I'm starting to realize my requirement is a bit more difficult than I imagined. The accounts will be coming in from different TXT files (with differing column names, of course) that I either need to put into a single table, or UNION them into a single query.

The user needs to be able to search through that consolidated list of accounts, possibly using partial account numbers, or even account holder name (a different column in the TXT files). From the result set, the user should be able to associate some of all of them to a region (writing this association to a table, of course).

It seems like I will need some 2-column table that links the list of consolidated account numbers to the regions table, so that the user can store his changes. But I need him to do the actual search on the consolidated TXT files.

Is this kind of thing even possible in Access?

 

[Jeanette Cunningham]

Thanks for the response, but I'm starting to realize my requirement is a bit more difficult than I imagined. The accounts will be coming in from different TXT files (with differing column names, of course) that I either need to put into a single table, or UNION them into a single query.

The user needs to be able to search through that consolidated list of accounts, possibly using partial account numbers, or even account holder name (a different column in the TXT files). From the result set, the user should be able to associate some of all of them to a region (writing this association to a table, of course).

But I need him to do the actual search on the consolidated TXT files.

Is this kind of thing even possible in Access?

In general terms, yes, it can be done.
You would link to the txt file/s create the union query and search it the same way you would search a local or linked mdb/accdb table. Whether it will work for this case depends a lot on the txt files.

You say that you need to record the account number with its associated region in a new table in the database. You could run an append query from the union query to add the account numbers to the new table in the database.

If you are looking for suggestions on creating a search form, here is a link to a sample search form that I use frequently.

http://www.allenbrowne.com/ser-62.html

 

[CaptainWilly]

Thanks again, Jeanette. I really appreciate your help.