New user - separate a table into two tables

[TheShabz]

If you change to view from Design to SQL, you will see what's really happening in a query. Go to SQL view, put that in, changing table and field names to match your tables, and then go back to design view.

[Henry_Reimer]

Thanks for sticking with me. The code did not work: A box asking me to "enter parameter value" came up.

Looking at the SQL syntax for Updates I see that it is expecting a value rather than a variable. Perhaps that is the issue. Also, I note that the original "parameter value" that it asks for is Donors.DonorID. When I click OK another "enter parameter value" box comes up, this time asking for the Donors.First Name. When I click OK a third "enter parameter value" box comes up, this time asking for Donors.Last Name. That is, all three references to another table (the Donors table) seem to cause a problem.
??

[TheShabz]

If your field name has spaces in it, you have to wrap it with brackets. so you would have Donors.[Last Name]. Also, make sure everything is case sensitive. look up "Update query syntax" and you should be able to figure it out. It's not very complicated.

[Henry_Reimer]

Yeah, I had discovered the need for brackets. But that did not help in this case. Reading the help files on joins, I notice that there are some issues regarding blank cells. My donations table has lots of blank cells in the FirstName and LastName fields (since I don't fill in these fields for organizational donors). Perhaps an "outer join" (right join) is needed?

[TheShabz]

If you are mixing organizational donors along with individuals, what I would do is create a DonorName field that combines both first name and last name. Then join off that single field. Having separate fields for first name and last name implies that all of the entries are humans. With organizations, you dont need to. So add the field then run an update query on both tables:
UPDATE tableName
SET DonorName = Trim([First Name] & " " & [Last Name])