Comments in-line below.....
ie details on a record's
field may be outdated, so I need a mechanism to identify
the changed field. If a field has changed the field and
record needs to be updated or if no match is found a new
record created.
Sorry, I'm not understanding all of that....
Cascading combo boxes would be an avenue to investigate (
I may need more info on this)
It's my suggestion that's how you do it if you're going to use combo boxes.
If I choose the any three combo boxes options, would it
mean coding in the AfterUpdate
part of each combo box?
In both situations, the AfterUpdate event of the combo box requires some
coding. In the 'cascading' version, cboFirstName will fire off an
instruction for cboSurname to requery. The row source for cboSurname is a
query that filters based on the selection made in cboFirstName. Like I said
before, it'd be beyond my skills to write an 'ANY' type of code.
Can a control's control source
have multiple entries? No.
...The reason for having the three combo boxes is that I do
not duplicate a record. I need to be sure that the record
selected is the one I want,
So, the combination of FirstName, Surname, and PhoneNumber makes the record
unique? If that's the case, then make those three fields combined into the
PK (or alternatively, index the combination).
Or, if you want to get slick, maybe you write code in the form's
BeforeUpdate event that will compare the entries in the FirstName, Surname,
and PhoneNumber fields to check the file for duplicates. If there are no
duplicates, the record is saved. If there is a duplicate, then that record
is pulled up for comparison. (John Smith Jr. and John Smith Sr. might both
work at the same company with the same phone #.)
One of the MVPs here, Albert D. Kallal has a web-site that has lots of tips
on designing an Access app. One of them is where you type letters into a
field and the listbox below starts filtering on those letters. Sorry, I
don't have the link to that particular page, but here's a link to one of the
pages on his site - search through there for some good ideas:
http://www.attcanada.net/~kallal.msn/ridesrpt/ridesrpt.html
You're welcome ;-)