Fix my Access Document Please

[LamJam20]

For the last 3 days, I have been trying to fix my access document as I am wanting to track inventory on merchandise gifted by people as well as track their monetary donation. I am starting a non-profit.



I have 3 tables setup
1. Donor Information (name, address, telephone, etc)
2. Inventory (contains items, size, gender, etc)
3. Monetary Donation (tracks who donated what)

I do not want to rely on table entry but rather form entry, so I have created 3 forms.

1. Add Donor
2. Add Inventory
3. Add Monetary Donation

My vision for this is: I want to be able to add a donor into the Donor form, that then updates the donor's table. I then would like to (first) add a monetary donation which I can choose the donor's name, enter the amount, and date received and this information updates on the Monetary Donation Table. Also if I wanted to add the donor's donated merchandise under inventory, I would like to add all the information in the inventory form that would then update on the inventory table.

What's going wrong: So far, the Monetary form is not associating itself correctly with the Donor Information. It is only grabbing the ID instead of the ID and name.

I have not tried the Inventory form yet as I have been trying to work the Monetary form first.

This all works so simply in my head but Access is very tricky when putting it to work.

If anyone is able to take this document attached and help me fix this database to help my non-profit, that would truly be amazing.. Or tell me step by step how to do it would be great.

**Side note: I've looked at relationships, Property sheets, etc and just have no clue what is not working correctly.
** I've also removed some private information to protect the donors information, so please know a lot of records have been deleted.

Your help would be very much appreciated!!

Google Link to Access Database: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1JLa...ew?usp=sharing

[pbaldy]

In normal design you only save the ID in related tables, so the monetary donations table should only have the donor ID, not the name. Maybe this helps?

http://www.baldyweb.com/Autofill.htm

[LamJam20]

I'm not fully understanding

[pbaldy]

Which part? In a relational database, you only store the ID in related tables. That means the monetary donation table should only have a field for the donor ID, not the donor name. You get the name by joining the tables together in a query for a report, etc. Or display it on forms as I showed in the link. What if a year from now Mary Smith gets married and becomes Mary Jones? You've got her name wrong in the donations table, and any other tables you may have stored donor info other than the donors table.

[peterFisp]

Hi there,
First let me say that I am probably the last person to bud in here. However, while not using the VB part of Access very successfully, table design is a different matter.
What the other contributors are hinting at but not spelling out is that in any database with related tables you want to use the Relationships option in the Database Tools. In there you would want to define the relationships and designate them as enforced. Thereafter, your problems should go away.

There should be no database design with more than one table that does not have its relationships defined AND enforced - mostly they would be one to many. Doing it properly would prevent the null entries in your table as well as that name where there should be an ID.