I have 75 fields in a database that are all marked with either 'A', 'B' or
'C' or blank.
Ow.
You don't have a database. You have a spreadsheet! If each field's
name is the name of a group, your database is incorrectly normalized.
A much better design would have three tables:
Persons
PersonID <Primary Key>
LastName
FirstName
<other biographical data>
Groups
GroupID <Primary Key>
GroupName
<other info about the group as a whole, if needed>
Membership
PersonID
GroupID
<any info about this person's membership in this group, such as a
text field containing A, B, or C, if you want to keep that info>
I want to change all populated fields to a 'Y' so that I can
see they they are associated to a group, but i dont want to be able to see
what group they belong to. Each person in the database can belong to one or
more of the 75 fields.
How can I change these records without using Find/Replace.
If you want to *permanently and irrevocably* lose the distinction
between A, B and C, you can run an Update query updating *all 75*
fields to:
IIF(IsNull([fieldname]), Null, "Y")
using the seventy-five different fieldnames.
I'd REALLY suggest stepping back and restructuring your database
though; not only are queries going to be a real nightmare, but if you
ever need to add or change a group, you'll need to restructure your
table, all your queries, all your forms, and all your reports that use
this table.
If I'm misunderstanding your use of the terms "field" and "group"
please post back... on rereading, I may well be, but if so I clearly
don't understand your table structure.
John W. Vinson [MVP]
