one to many relationship question

[ssanfu]

Also be aware that "First", Last" and "State" are reserved words in Access and shouldn't be used for object names.

[cphillippe]

so if i have say 5-6 forms to populate my DB, should i just create one big table and just pull only the fields i need? i was trying to avoid doing that.

[June7]

It is a balancing act between normalization and ease of data entry/output. "Normalize until hurts and denormalize until it works"

It seems one table will handle the described data. Yes, there may be some empty fields.

Exactly what are you trying to avoid? Pulling only desired fields is always an option no matter how you structure tables.

Regardless of which way you go, I expect a Tab control will be the best way to organize the data input controls and/or subforms.

[cphillippe]

a tab control like davegri's example? i think that would be useful for my db

[davegri]

If you have a main table, with related tables (like your original design), then the mainform/tabcontrol setup is easy, compact and efficient.
If the design warrants it, a single table with more than one form to do the updates is also easy, but perhaps not compact or as efficient (for the user).
In your case you could go either way.
I have developed one database with 36 tables and dozens of forms, subforms, reports, queries and more than 23000 lines of VBA code.
It all depends on the requirements and goals.

A good next step for you (after you decide on a design and complete the form(s)) would be to design and build a report showing your names along with the data for each, with names in alphabetical order.

[cphillippe]

so i redesigned the DB and reduced the tables from 12 down to 4. I still have the same amount of forms, but this will be easier to maintain because i have no relationships. thanks everyone for the input and help