Record locks on a form

[Zampa]

hope someone can help me with this.
I have a table of data that comprises a bunch of customer data that we need to call each day. At the moment the list from the table of customer details is printed off and passed round a team of 6 for each agent to use as their work sheet for the day. I'd like to change this so that, in a multi user environment, we have a form displayed that shows the customer details on the screen and allows the user to record outcomes etc. effectively editing the record

That's all working well and have no concerns about collecting data and storing it back etc. BUT if I open the form on my PC the customer record shows as i hoped it would. However if one of my colleagues opens the form on their screen at the same time, we both see the same record.

I have put a record lock on the form properties for "edited record" but on its own this doesn't seem to help. At the moment we are both simply opening the form from the side bar of all Access objects list.

As we move forward and before release to the agents, I will be creating a command button on a Welcome form with "give me the next record" on it (or similar). Is there some code i should add to this button that will open the form and display data based on the next unlocked record in the table? Hopefully that makes sense.
should add that at the moment the database is not split, not sure if that matters.
Many thanks in advance

 

[Ranman256]

you MUST have a split db. Do you?
each user has a their own copy of the front end
and the Backend tables is on a server.
this prevents the locks.

another way is to show users a snapshot and only allow them to edit 1 record.

 

[Zampa]

Thanks so far. I'll split the table. The intention was that each user will open the Dbase from a single network drive, in a different folder to where the Back end will be. I think I then need to copy the .accdb it to a folder on each users local C drive for them to launch form there?

 

[Zampa]

Thanks - back end tables? - bad use of language. all the tables are now split off into a separate network folder and hopefully tomorrow we'll get the chance to create local copies of the front end and go from there.
Thanks all for help given so far.

 

[Gasman]

You should likely be only giving them an accde FE and not an accdb FE ?

 

[Zampa]

Thanks Gasman - didn't know that. I'll google and find out more.
where i am at right now is that I've split the database and left the backend tables on a network drive. The front ends are now in a new folder on the C drive of two different, networked, PCs.
The form properties of the form that the agents use to review the data and make their calls, before doing any editing, are set to record locks - Edited record, this still though present the same data to different screens. I then thought it was because i hadn't actually edited any data, so I filled in a couple of data fields on the form on PC1 and then opened the form on PC2, which just showed the same record, including the updated data fields. If i set the record locks property on the form to ALL records, sure enough that locks it out on PC2 for example and stops me accessing nay data at all ( as expected) but that kind of defeats the object really and i might as well use an Excel spreadsheet. Should i perhaps put some code in the on load for the form, to fill in a couple of dummy data fields so that effectively the form is being edited immediately and not just open, which might be allowing the same record to be open? Again thanks in advance for all the help being offered. I've done plenty of Dbases where the user enters data and pushes it into tables which are then later queried and reported on, but never done one where the data is there and is pushed out to a multi user environment.