Post Code laymen help

[Davidekreed]

I am in desparate need of help with creating a short cut for entering data, particularly wrt addresses. I, like many others would like to enter EITHER a post code number or a suburb name in a form (whichever one I have), and have the city, state, region and remaining post code/suburb field filled in automatically.

I am creating a kids club membership database and have a table with their name, address, phone, email etc. This table is called 'Kids Club'
I have another table with 8000+ lines of post code information for Australia. It's fields are 'Post Code', 'Suburb' & 'State' and this table is called 'PostCode'
There is not a primary key in the 'Kids Club'
table that correspondes to a field in the 'Post Code' table
Now, some australian post codes have various suburbs and some suburbs have different post codes in different states.
Also, I have already created 3 tables for City, Region, and Country, so that I was able to create a drop down box in the form to select this information from.

I have tried to do Dlookup expressions after reading peoples suggestions. I have read about doing simple queries where you join the tables and the 'data will automatically update', but I only started using access yesterday (I'm Serious) and I don't understand the lingo.

Could anyone be able to give me complete, step by step instructions to allow me to do what should be a simple proceedure.
I would simply like to enter a suburb name on a form, which automatically pulls the info out of the PostCode table and inserts the info in the City, State, and Post Code boxes in the form. However, some kids write either the post code or the suburb, so I would need to be able to do the same proceedure for a given post code.

Any help/advice would be GREATLY appreciated.

Thanks,
Dave

P.S. Any help given would need to be in simple, step by step terms, as I am a complete stranger with MS Access. Thanks again!!!

[This message has been edited by Davidekreed (edited 10-15-2001).]

[This message has been edited by Davidekreed (edited 10-15-2001).]

 

[Jack Cowley]

On method would be to create a Combo box on your form using the PostCode table as the basis for the Combo box. Using the Wizard create the Combo box so that it has the SuburbName, PostCode, City, State and any other data that you need. In the After Update event of the Combo box you would put code similar to this:

Me.PostCode = Me.ComboBoxName.Column(1)
Me.City = Me.ComboBoxName.Column(2)
Me.State = Me.ComboBoxName.Column(3)
Etc....

Combo boxes are 0 (zero) based so Column(1) is actually the 2nd column in the Combo box.

With a Combo box you can start typing in the name of the suburb and the Combo box will select the nearest match as you type so you cannot put in Beacon Hull instead of Beacon Hill...

 

[Davidekreed]

Thanks Jack for your speedy reply. I made it work on a small test database, and now I will try it on the main database.

You might like to have a look at my question posted today in the forms section. In simple terms, when entering data on the form for a post code or suburb that is not in my post code table, I would like to 1) be able to type it in, and 2) have the new info for post code, suburb, state entered back into the table.

got a clue?
Thanks again!