using drop down to fill in report fields

[laurenb]

Hi everyone - very new to Access so I appreciate your patience with what I hope is a simple question.

I have a table with a drop-down field containing clients' names. The table itself has other information about the clients. I would like to create a report that prompts the user to select a name, thereby filling in the rest of the fields in the report for that person (e.g. choose John Smith and the address, phone, occupation, etc are automatically filled in). This is not for editing purposes (in fact, I do not want the user to be able to edit the data), only for viewing whichever client's information they choose in an easier-to-read report format.

When I add the name field though it adds every possible name that could be chosen from the original drop down menu in the table, rather than asking for the user to choose. How do I fix this? Please help! I wasn't able to to find anything in previous questions surrounding this topic.

 

[Isskint]

Hi lauren,

If your report is driven straight off your table then you could use the where clause of the DoCmd.OpenReport method to restrict the clients name to one selected in a form for example.
Alternatively if the report is driven off a query, then you could add a para,eter prompt to the Client name criteria for a user to enter the name (not a good idea due to typos) OR again reference a name selected from a form.

Let us know which way suits best. If you need any further help, just shout.

 

[laurenb]

Thanks! I'll try that.

Related question: I've created another report that displays a list of entries in a given timeframe grouped by the clients' names. While the name field is there though, no name appears - just the label. The full field is visible in the design view, but no name comes through when the report is pulled. The report is based off a query, which works on its own just fine. I'm not sure why the name field doesn't fill in. Any thoughts?