Tbl population from fm problem

[sbooder]

Hi All,
I am having trouble getting a form to populate a table with certain information. Sergeant was good enough to help me out with getting two combo boxes to work together in the form but now the information from the two boxes are the only info from the form that will not populate the tbl.

The fm is Sightings and the tbl is sightings too, the two conbo boxes in fm sightings sorce is, tbl BBList. The two combo boxes are called CommonName & Species.

I have attached the DB in a zip file, it only very small and really only a trial run, so if anyone could put me out of my misery and tell me how to do it I would be most grateful.

I have tried relationships and queries but to no avail, I am as you will be able to tell very new to DBing. I am using Access 2002 in Office XP

 

[Sergeant]

Hello Simon.
Here's the thing...(and this really shouldn't shock you, because you've done it correctly for the location and the spotter)...
You're not supposed to store the common name and species in the sightings table. You only need the selected BirdID recorded there, like you have. (you also have common name and species columns in the sightings table, which need to come out)
Whenever you need to retrieve the sightings info, you make a query that will combine the birds table with the sightings table. The idea is that you should never see a primary key (birdID) or a foreign key (Sightings.birdID) anywhere in the user interface. That's the beauty of a relational database...anything that might get used more than once gets stored only once, and then an abbreviated code is used to represent it elsewhere (BirdID).
There are other things you should refine, but that will come over time.
Let me get you started...don't store OLEObjects (photos) IN your database. Search the forum for pictures/photos and see how it's done. (the gist of it: store the pics in a folder and just store a path to the pic in each record.)
Here's another one for you...what if you want to store > 1 pic for a sighting?

 

[sbooder]

Hi Sergeant,
thank you once again for the prompt and easy to understand advice. You have put my mind at ease. The odd thing is (and I presume this was the same for all new to DBing) while I was franticly trying to get the CommonName and Species field to populate from the form, I learnt so many things on the way, so even though I needn’t have spent the time trying to do what was not needed, it was kind of worth it.

Thanks again,

Simon.

 

[alastair69]

Simon,

Have you sorted out your problem or not?

 

[sbooder]

Simon,

Have you sorted out your problem or not?

I think so, until the next problem raises it's ugly head!

Thanks.