Can I do this ? Import tables to change some fields and leave others alone.

[steve]

I have a program that gathers hardware info from about 100 compuers.

It puts it nicely into several fields, 30 or so. CPU Speed, Disk size,
Bios name and version. That kind of stuff.
This information as I say is from a program that goes out and gets the
info and then puts it into a file. I import this data into an Access
db.
I use this db to find out which computers I manage and information
about them.

But I also want to use this db for keeping track of support issues
problems and hardware problems with the computers individual computers
that I personally edit.

What I want to do is periodically import updated hardware info from the
hardware info file. It can wipe out the previous hardware info so long
as it stays in the same computer number row. eg If the computer is
called WS01 the new data will update the row WS01 and can over write
all the old data. But I dont want to loose the support data that I
added.

So my question is, can you import and update the hardware info in the
db, but not the support info. If I can do this can you tell me
generally how I can do this. What I should be looking for.

Regard
Steve

 

[John Vinson]

So my question is, can you import and update the hardware info in the
db, but not the support info. If I can do this can you tell me
generally how I can do this. What I should be looking for.

Certainly. You're using a relational database; *use it relationally*!

You should have a table for the hardware information, related
one-to-many to a *separate* table for support information (surely you
want to allow for more than one support incident per computer). You'ld
update the hardware table with the hardware information, and use
(probably) a Form with a Subform to enter and edit support data.

John W. Vinson[MVP]