Designing donor database

[Guest]

I am having trouble designing a database to track donations. I could easily
do this if there was one donor per item in all cases, but some items have
several donors, and we need to be able to list all of the donors in
alphabetical order--not just by the first donor.

We used to have an old DOS database package, Q&A, that had a feature called
a "Keyword" field, where you could enter several values separated by
semicolons, and the program was able to print out each separate value, along
with the rest of the information in the record, on a report. I sure wish
there was something like this in Access!

Is there a way that I could enter several values into one field, as I've
described?

Another wrinkle to this is that I'd like to have the donor table display
along with the item table so that it would be easy for the person who is
updating this information to use it.

Any hints on how to design this database?

Thanks!

 

[Kurt Stickney via AccessMonster.com]

I used Q&A many years ago and loved it. Then came relational databases.

If you think Q&A, you will be unable to create a relational database
because Q&A is FLAT FILE not RELATIONAL.

For Donors:
DonorID-AutoNumber
DFirstName
DLastName

For Donations:
DonationID-AutoNumber
Description

This is a Many to Many Table:
DonorID
DonationID

Following this logic each Donor can make many donations and each Donation
can have many donors.

Hope this helps.

Kurt
(e-mail address removed)