Splitting flat file to Relational

[Guest]

I have a donations DB that was set up in Access as a flat file, with donor
demographics, then amt, chkno, donor class, etc. in EACH record. Each record
has a unique autonumber. I have split the original table into a Donor table
and Donations table. The Donor table now has the appropriate demographic
data. I ran an append query and edited to eliminate repeats. And then I
added an autonumbered DonorID. The Donations are now in a table with the
original autonumbered field, a newly added DonorID field, to relate to the
DonorID in Donor table, and the existing donor demographic data (don't want
to loose who gave what just yet), and the donation info.

Now the question: How do I get Access to fill in the DonorID field in the
Donations table so I can eliminate all the demographic data and reduce the
table to a more normalized form relating the DonorID field in both tables?

Thanks for any suggestions.

 

[John Nurick]

Start by building a Select query that joins the Donor and Donations
tables on enough of the demographic fields to ensure you get correct
matches (e.g. firstname, lastname, address, postcode and telephone
number). If the query is returning the same number of records you have
in the Donations table it's probably right.

Once you're confident the query is joining the right records, convert it
into an Update query and update Donations.DonorID to Donor.DonorID.

Finally, treble-check everything before deleting the demographic fields
from the Donations table.