Please Help with Relational Aspects

[Jennifer]

I know, this is so basic, but I'm new to this and seem to
have bitten off more than I can chew.

I have one table "Items" with book titles in it. In
another table "Individuals" I have lots of contact
information for individual authors, and others. In
another table "Authors" I have fields for item number,
and Individual Id, to link everything together (these two
fields combine for a unique key).

Now I need a library printout by book title, with a field
indicating the author's name. I can do this with queries
and reports, however, I don't know how to get books with
multiple authors to show up as one entry (it shows up in
the report as 2 seperate books with a different author
each instead of one book with 2 authors). Seems like I'd
create another field in my query using some sort
of "trim" type command, but I'm not sure what it would be.

Thank you so much for the help. I keep referencing my
manual, but it reads like Greek to me.

Jennifer

 

[Marshall Barton]

I know, this is so basic, but I'm new to this and seem to
have bitten off more than I can chew.

I have one table "Items" with book titles in it. In
another table "Individuals" I have lots of contact
information for individual authors, and others. In
another table "Authors" I have fields for item number,
and Individual Id, to link everything together (these two
fields combine for a unique key).

Now I need a library printout by book title, with a field
indicating the author's name. I can do this with queries
and reports, however, I don't know how to get books with
multiple authors to show up as one entry (it shows up in
the report as 2 seperate books with a different author
each instead of one book with 2 authors). Seems like I'd
create another field in my query using some sort
of "trim" type command, but I'm not sure what it would be.

There are two standard approaches to this kind of situation.
One is to stay with your existing query and use Sorting and
Grouping (View menu) to specify a group for the title. Then
you can place the title in the group header section and the
authors in the detail section.

The other approach is to use one query with just the titles
on a main report and another query with the junction table
and authors in a subreport. Use the subreport control's
Link Master/Child properties to tie the subreport authors to
the corresponding title id,