New to Access and Need HELP!

[waldock9]

Hello,



I'm new to access and need help.

My task is to create a database that tracks all our staff's training and will highlight when the training is out of date.

I have been using Excel for the past 3 years to do this and it has worked well. With the conditional formatting it highlighted the fields when they where out of date.

I have been asked to move this onto Access.

In preparation for this I have watched You Tube and Googled it all extensively and have created a starting point but I have hit a stumbling block!

I have created the Table and Form with all the information in but now I'm trying to create the Query with the rules on but I'm just totally stuck. I have tried a few things and it hasn't worked!!

Can anybody help me?

I have tried to attach a copy of the file so you can see what I have actually done but it exceeds the file limit!

Any Help would be greatly appreciated!!!

waldock9

[NoellaG]

Hi,

I'm a bit concerned about the "I have created THE table and THE form" bit. Access is a relational database and the basis should be a normalised set of tables, related to each other through the primary and foreign keys.
Without a normalized basis you'll soon run into trouble;..

succes
NG

PC: try to compact your database and then zip it before including it

[waldock9]

Hi,

I'm a bit concerned about the "I have created THE table and THE form" bit. Access is a relational database and the basis should be a normalised set of tables, related to each other through the primary and foreign keys.
Without a normalized basis you'll soon run into trouble;..

succes
NG

PC: try to compact your database and then zip it before including it

Hi,

I created the table and then form off the table. I may be explaining this wrong but I though it was meant to be done this way.

I have compressed the file and zipped like you said and have attached it.

I'm a total novice and you will see this through my descriptions!

[NoellaG]

Hi,

I took a peek at your database, and it's as bad as I feared. Before starting with forms and queries you need to normalize your database by splitting up the 1 table into a set of normalized tables.
To be able to do this, please take some time to look at this topic (for instance at http://databases.about.com/od/specif...malization.htm or even wikipedia) before proceeding with your database.

succes
NG

[waldock9]

Is normalization needed? What are the advantages??

Thanks

Jay

[NoellaG]

Hi,

Access works very differently than Excel. Without normalization it doesn't work properly, in that case you'd better stick to Excel.

gr
NG

[waldock9]

Hello,

I will do this as I have too. From what I can make out then it's saying that things can't be duplicated to ensure that 1NF is achieved. I can't see where the duplicated data is.

Can you suggest a starting point for me?

[NoellaG]

Hi,

there are a lot of doubles in the field 'Service'
Also the repeating field combinations Induction, Induction Certificate, health and Safety, H+S certificate can't remain, ect.

You'll need at least the tables tblPersons (ID, name, first name, ...)
tblCertificates (where each certificate is a record not a field) and tblPersonCertificate to combine the two. Don't forget to addthe Primary Key and add the necessary indexes.
If you change the database, also look at the names of objects (tables, fields, ...): no weird signs, best no spaces, ...

I really would advice some training before you start...

grNG

[waldock9]

Thanks NoellaG, this is a help, I will be looking at all the information I get, hopefully I'll achieve something that is workable.



Jay