Tables

[sdollen]

I've read many many posts in this forum and the same on another forum which I won't mention here

I'm fairly new to access... I've tinkered with it and can do things, but I know I take the long way around and probably not the most efficient.

My question is this - I've read a lot of posts about forms, and I've always had the impression that you should almost always build tables prior to the forms. That "forms" are a method of posting the info into the table unless you just want to post directly to the table? I'm I way out in left field here?

Thanks

 

[Pat Hartman]

The reason for building tables first is that in almost all cases, you want your forms to be bound to a table or preferably a query. So build a table, then a query to select the rows and columns you want, then a form to display/edit the recordset produced by the query.

Forms are a much more user friendly way of entering/updating data. You can add error checking and formatting. You can base the forms on queries so you can join to other tables to "lookup" related data.