Best practice - Form design

[les@wilcock.plus.com]

Hi
Sorry this question won't tax the skills of the more experienced forum member but we all begin as newbie's like myself.

As a volunteer at a local charity I was asked to construct a database that would capture the results from a local paper based survey. The survey contained four section and in total, amounts to about 40 fields.

I have constructed the table and created four forms, one for each section of the survey. I then created a navigation form with a tab for each of the four forms (Survey sections).

So far so good, however the first problem I encountered was clicking on each section I could have a different record number displaying

For example I could open Section 1 tab and navigate to Record 10, then open Section 2 and find its still on Record 1. Ideally all the four forms would would synchronised so they displayed the same record. Is this possible or are we into the dark art of writing VBA code?

Alternatively am I doing this the wrong way. Should I have one form but obviously this would involve scrolling down as the operator entered the data. Or could I have one form and employ page break then have a control called 'Next' which would move onto the next page / section.



I am sure I am not the first person to want capture data on a reasonably long form so I guess my question is what is best practice in terms of database design.

All comments greatly appreciated.

LesW

[June7]

If this is one table then use a normal form with a Tab Control and arrange the fields on each tab (also called a page). Each tab can correspond to a survey section.