Access 2000 .... pattern recognition

G

Guest

Hi,

In Access 2003 if had a series of cells in a column that I wanted to type a
pattern of numbers into, all I had to do was hold down the down-arrow and it
would race down the column filling in my pattern.

For example, in 2003, if I typed "2", then down, then "4", then down, then
"6" then down... Access would recognize that I'm filling in those cells with
every other even number andall I'd have to do is hold the down-arrow down for
as many cells as I want to do that.

Now here in 2007, it's not doing that anymore, and I have to manually type
"2", "4", "6", "8", "10", etc. etc.

I'm not talking about any kind of auto-number feature here, by the way,
because I only might want to do it for a certain set of rows or maybe queried
rows.

Is this something I have to turn on, or has this been completely eliminated
from 2007? Thanks.
 
P

Pat Hartman \(MVP\)

This "feature" should never have been added to Access in the first place and
perhaps the A2007 team saw the light. Access is NOT a spreadsheet and
tables are not worksheets and they do not contain cells. If you want to
number your rows, do it in a report.

To answer your question, I don't see any setting in A2003 to turn this
behavior on or off and I don't have A2007 loaded here. If there is a
setting, it would be somewhere near spell check or auto correct.
 
G

Guest

I'm not really needing it for display or reporting purposes. It's a behind
the scenes sort order field I need to fill in for ony certain rows, and not
others, which I've queried out.

Thanks, though.

By the way, if they aren't cells, what are they? Am I not supposed to use
Access as a data editor and only use UPDATEs and INSERTs?
 
D

Douglas J. Steele

You're not supposed to work directly with tables (or queries). Forms are
what are intended to let you work with the data.
 
G

Guest

Then why do they even give us a Datasheet View and/or the ability to edit
data directly, if I'm not supposed to use it? Nobody else excpet me is using
this, I don't need a common user to enter data into the table, so I don't see
the need for the overhead of a form.
 
B

Bill Mosca, MS Access MVP

Ondy

If you are the only one using the database, then by all means enter data
directly into the tables. Forms are meant to guide and restrict users other
than the one doing the designing.

The "cells" you asked about are actally a combination of 2 things: the
record and the field. Think of it like time and space. Both are needed to
define a presence. Both the record and the field are needed to define a
value.

If you have a need for sequential numbering, you could do it in Excel and
then paste it into the Access table. I, for one, found that feature useful
when creating lookup tables that needed initialized sequences other than
AutoNumbers, but I am definately a minority.
 
D

David W. Fenton

This "feature" should never have been added to Access in the first
place and perhaps the A2007 team saw the light. Access is NOT a
spreadsheet and tables are not worksheets and they do not contain
cells. If you want to number your rows, do it in a report.
Click to expand...

It's funny. The overall goal in A2K7 seems to have been to make
Access more user-friendly for casual users. I always thought that
the spreadsheet increment function introduced in A2K was there for
exactly that reason.

I agree it doesn't belong in a database, but it wouldn't be the
least useful function if it could be turned on at will for a
particular field in a datasheet (and would be off by default, of
course).

I was never terribly bothered by it, even though I edit data in
datasheets a lot (when doing data cleanup, which, it seems to me,
never ends).
 
D

David W. Fenton

Aaraon Kempf, masquereing as an MVP blathered in
isn't he using a form?

don't forms in datasheet view do the same thing?
Click to expand...

Yes, it's not just table views, but all datasheets.

A valid observation from Aaron! Break out the champagne!
 

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