help. too many fields to make a form !!!

[amd711]

i have a table which has about 214 fields in it, and i need to make a form for data entry but access wont allow me to do that because the number of fields transcends the maximum number that a form can handle

and so i devided the number of fields into many forms and created a button in each one that transfer to the next one, however, i cant get them all fill in the same record of the original table
each form writes to a new record in the original table and leave the other fields empty

[Robeen]

I have never worked with any one table that has that many fields, though I have HAVE seen some in the major Airline Cargo industry that have that many - or more. That was in the mainframe world and was a whole different ball-game.

Since you haven't provided much information about your Table itself - or the data, here is a suggestion that you might be able to use.

On each Form, instead of 'Inserting' a record as your Forms are doing, create a button that 'Updates' the record you are working on.
In order to Update, you have to be able to identify the record [in your Table] that needs to be updated with the info on the current Form.

Here's a quick one-field example of what I'm talkng about.
In this example:
I update a Date field in a Table - YourTableName.DateField . . .
With a Date from a text box on my Form - Me.DateFieldOnYourForm . . .
Using an ID value from the Form that matches an ID value in the Table - WHERE YourTableName.PrimaryKeyField = " & Me.IDFieldOnYourForm.

'Update a Table with values from a field on a Form.
Dim db As Database
Set db = CurrentDb
db.Execute ("UPDATE YourTableName SET YourTableName.DateField = #" & Me.DateFieldOnYourForm & "# WHERE YourTableName.PrimaryKeyField = " & Me.IDFieldOnYourForm)

Hope this helps. Let us knopw if you have questions.

[John_G]

The number of controls you can have on a form over its lifetime is 750+ (That's for A2000 - don't know about A2003), so I don't know what the issue is. Did you try using multiple tabs to separate the fields into groups?

But back to multiple forms:

It sounds as if the Dataentry property of each form is set to Yes. That's ok for the first one, but for each of the others, it has to be Dataentry = No. In addition to that, you won't be able to have more than one of the forms open at a time, because they will all be trying to edit the same record. The code behind your Transfer button will have to first close the first form, then open the next one, using the Wherecondition parameter of the docmd.openform to specify which record to open for further editing.

HTH

John