I need to autopopulate one field based on a value entered in anoth

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Guest

I am setting up a database and would like several fields to autopopulate
based on what is entered in another field. I cannot find this in help or in
the massive manual I have, probably because I do not know what to call what I
want to do...
 
If you can create data in other fields based on another field, you usually
should not do so. For example if you have the Date of Birth field, you should
not also have an Age field in the table. Instead you should compute the Age
based on the Date of Birth each time it is needed in a form or report. Why?

For one thing it saves space as you are only storing the one needed piece of
data instead of two.

Two: While the Date of Birth usually stays the same, Age will change every
year so that data might be incorrect which leads to inconsistant data.

Three: If someones Date of Birth was entered in error, you would need to
update both the Date of Birth and Age fields. If you forget to do one or the
other, again you will have inconsistant data.

There are exceptions such as an invoice which is a snapshot of what happened
at a particular point in time.
 
I am setting up a database and would like several fields to autopopulate
based on what is entered in another field. I cannot find this in help or in
the massive manual I have, probably because I do not know what to call what I
want to do...
Click to expand...

Well... I'd call it A Mistake.

That's not how relational databases work. You should store data ONCE,
and once only. If you need to "autopopulate" data from one table into
another table, consider instead using a Query joining the two tables.
You can then see data from the two tables in conjunction.

If I'm misunderstanding, please give a concrete example of what it is
that you're trying to autopopulate - what, from where, and into where.

John W. Vinson[MVP]
 
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