For starters, I am going to assume that you are referring to the MS Access
2007 templates downloaded from their template site. If that is not the case,
you'll need to identify "which" templates you are using.
The answer is, of course you can, but it is not quite so trivial as just
downloading and opening one of the templates was.
To do it properly, you would need to adopt a more standard, normalized
approach than exemplified in the templates. I'm not able to describe, in
detail, all of the steps you'll need to take because I can't see your
templates now, nor could I know what your final application should look
like. Nonetheless here is a high-level overview of what you can do.
All tables from all of the source templates should be moved into a single
accdb which will serve as the Back End for your new database.
There will no doubt be some overlap and duplications, so the next step will
be to figure out which tables you need in the "combined" application and
proceed to clean up. For example, if you end up with three "people" tables
(e.g. "employees" or "contacts") you need to select one of them as the
keeper and copy any existing records from the other two into it.
Do the same with other tables until you have distilled them down to the set
you need. You may also need to move fields from one table to another, and
even to create new tables.
I can't overemphasize the importance of getting this step right.
This is also a good time to clean up some of the non-standard conventions
you find in many MS templates. This would be things like spaces or special
characters in names (anathema to competent developers), and creating
meaningful names for primary keys.
<Editorial> I've never understood why MS insists on using "ID" as the name
of every primary key in every table in their templates. There might be some
reason, but no good one which I can think of. <End Editorial>
Then you'll need to redefine relationships between the tables. This is
another critical step.
Then, with a valid table design for the combined tables, you are ready to
repeat the process for the forms, queries, reports, etc. in a new Front End
accdb.
Import all of the forms, etc. from all three source templates, then proceed
as above, removing the duplicate objects, leaving only those you need.
Finally, you'll be ready to redesign any forms that you need to support the
combined process. That, I'm afraid, may involve considerable redesign work.
Especially so because you are launching into a custom design and none of
the templates is currently set up to support that. In some ways, you may be
better off designing someof your new forms from scratch.
In short, you can combine the elements of the three source templates.
However, you're going to end up with a database customized to your needs,
and that means a considerable amount of serious redesign.
If you decide that this is more work than you want to invest, or if the
tasks are more complex than you feel prepared to undertake, you would do
well to seek out the assistance of a LOCAL Access developer who can coach
you through the process. I suggest a LOCAL developer primarily so that you
can get together in front of the same monitor to discuss changes.
Best of luck with your project.
