MS Access Data Entry Forms

[Guest]

I am in the process of building a form in MS Access 2000. The form is
similar to a purchase order or bill of laiding. The top of the form has data
entry fields as follows; Vendor Name, Vendor address, PO #, and Date (Ect).
On this same form, I want to enter one, or multiple PO or Bill of laiding
line items which will contain the following fields; part numbers, part qty's
for each part number, and part weights for each part number. I don't want to
enter all of the form info entered at the top of the form for each of the
part numbers, so how would I make the form and associated table so that the
information at the top can be tied to each of the part numbers added to the
form. I can't seem to get passed the issue that one form equals one record,
when I'm trying to use the one form to enter multiple records. This seems
like a one to many type operation which I can't seem to figure out. Any
suggestions would be appreciated.

Thanks,

 

[DL]

You dont start your db design with a form, initilly sketch it out on paper
eg tables/relationships/fields etc.
The form is simply a view of data that may be on various tables.
http://www.databaseanswers.org/data_models/index.htm for some ideas

 

[George Hepworth]

Forms are only tools through which you insert records into tables, so the
design of the forms MUST reflect the design of the tables. In this case, it
sounds like you have a classical PO workflow in which you need to have (at
least) two tables: One for the PO itself and a related detail table into
which the line items for the PO are recorded.

The form of your question itself gives a clue as to how and why this is the
right design for you ,

The tables will be related via a primary/foreign key pair (the Pimary Key of
each PO is inserted into one or more PO Detail records as a foreign key
which "points back" uniquely to the PO).


To create the forms to handle this, you will insert a subform into the main
form. The main form is bound to the PO table and the subform is bound to the
PO Detail table. Access will help you set this up so that the two tables
remain related during data entry.

George