Names

[Guest]

This is an example of a name in a table and a name selected from a drop down
menu on a form.

Table Form
Tim Johnson Tim S. Johnson

What I need help with is how do I get access to recognize that Tim S.
Johnson and Tim Johnson are the same person. I can't change the name on the
form because it relates to other tables/queries that are working correctly,
the same goes for the name in the table as it relates to other queries that
work correctly.

Any thoughts or ideas.
Thanks

 

[Douglas J. Steele]

Add another field to the table that has the alternate form. You can either
make that field the same as the existing field if there's no ambiguity, or
you can make it Null, and use Nz([AlternateField], [OriginalField) in
queries, etc.

 

[John W. Vinson]

This is an example of a name in a table and a name selected from a drop down
menu on a form.

Table Form
Tim Johnson Tim S. Johnson

What I need help with is how do I get access to recognize that Tim S.
Johnson and Tim Johnson are the same person. I can't change the name on the
form because it relates to other tables/queries that are working correctly,
the same goes for the name in the table as it relates to other queries that
work correctly.

Any thoughts or ideas.
Thanks

If you're using people's names in Relationships, you're in trouble. I know
three gentlemen named Fred Brown right here in little Parma; I once worked
with Dr. Lawrence David Wise and his colleague Dr. Lawrence David Wise.

Names are NOT unique (or, for that matter, stable), and as such are
inappropriate for relations. You need some sort of unique identifier for each
person, and use THAT for your relationships! Doing so should resolve your
problem.

As far as that goes - how do you *know* that Tim and Tim S. are the same
person? They might be father and son; they might be two unrelated people with
a fairly common name.

John W. Vinson [MVP]