Newbie seeking input

[Bruzer]

Hoping for direction, I work for a non profit rehab centre and we are trying to create a data base to track clients. Contact info (name, age, address, ECT) - Family (children, married, next of kin) - substance abuse history (what was used, past treatment, clean date,) – Medical, Legal, emotional, physical, mental, spiritual information in the form of questions. All pertaining to a single client, so my question is one table or multiple tables? Please keep in mind that I am not a proficient Access programmer but am very motivated to learn and create a tool that will assist us in helping others!

[abbeyainscal]

Hoping for direction, I work for a non profit rehab centre and we are trying to create a data base to track clients. Contact info (name, age, address, ECT) - Family (children, married, next of kin) - substance abuse history (what was used, past treatment, clean date,) – Medical, Legal, emotional, physical, mental, spiritual information in the form of questions. All pertaining to a single client, so my question is one table or multiple tables? Please keep in mind that I am not a proficient Access programmer but am very motivated to learn and create a tool that will assist us in helping others!

Ok, for the basic demographic info - you would make a table that contains that and make sure that it contains a unique key (Access will do it for you if you don't have one). But, sometimes, something like the last name and a number are fine too.

Ok, now, for the questions to the answers, well, you could link a separate table to that and make sure you link the 2 unique identifiers.


Lay out all your form questions on a piece of paper and then give each one of them a unique name that will be the field name. Then, decide a grouping - meaning, ok, the first table can be the basic demographic, the second table can be medical history, etc. But, try to break it in a way that makes sense and the same unique id or key that was used for your main table will also be used for each subsequent tables. So, you might have 3 tables. You probably could keep it all in one table but it would be super cumbersome. I think by breaking it down, you have it much more manageable and then, much easier for future reports and queries. Good luck, Linda