Formatting split form datasheet portion

[SpaceEd]

Hi,

This may be a simple question, but I am having trouble formatting certain fields in the datasheet in a split form. I have several fields, say "Function," "Responsibility" and "Action." They have something similar to a one-to-many relationship in that there are several Actions for each Responsibility, and several Responsibilities to each Function.

Currently they are all in one table, but people can enter in information through this split form. Is there a way to make it so if there are two duplicate functions but two different responsibilities, one duplicate function is grayed out in the datasheet version of the split form? Almost so it appears like this:

Function 1 Responsibility 1 Action 1
Action 2
Responsibility 2 Action 3
Action 4



I know how to make it appear like this in a report, but when people enter data, it seems a little confusing. Any help would be appreciated

Thanks,
SpaceEd

[SpaceEd]

* Realized the spaces didn't show up... I meant something like this.

Function 1.......Responsibility 1...........Action 1
.................................................. ..Action 2
.....................Responsibility 2...........Action 3
.................................................. ..Action 4

[Whizbang]

Use two subforms.

Function 1   |   Responsibility 1   |  Action 1
                                    |  Action 2
             |   Responsibility 2   |  Action 3
                                    |  Action 4

The | mark indicates a subform.

So, you have a parent form whose record source is a list of unique Functions (and their ID's/Keys). Immediately to the right of the Function control you have a subform whose record source is a list of unique Function-Responibility combinations(and their ID's/Keys). Then inside that subform, immediately to the right of the Resposibility control is another subform that has a list of unique Responisbiulity-Action combinations(and their ID's/Keys).

Each of these subforms has a parent/child relationship using the ID's/Keys so that the subform shows the appropriate records.

[SpaceEd]

Thanks for the response

So I actually have several of those fields, such as more subcategories within Action, etc. Are you suggesting subform within subform within subform? Or just 3 subforms next to each other? Do you have any examples of things done in the past?

Also, do you know if there is a way to format the datasheet portion of the split form at all?

[Whizbang]

There may be a better solution. I don't know. My previous post was just my initial thoughts on your problem. If you want the same appearance as a report with "HideDuplicates" set to True, then that is all I can think of. It would probably be a resource hog to do it this way for a lot of fields. (and yes, each field you want to "hide" would be a subform in a subform).

It may be simpler to do something with conditional formatting. Maybe something like "DLookup("[ID]","RowSource","[FieldName] = [FieldName]") < [ID]" then you set the ForeColor to the same as the background. This would mean a lot of DLookups, however, if there were a lot of records, which could slow things down. Also, this assumes the form is sorted by ID in Ascending. Also, this would not be a splitform, but a subform with Tabular formatting on the fields.

I know that you can easily set the column widths in datasheet view, but other than that you don't have many options.

[SpaceEd]

Ok well thanks. I've been playing around with the formatting and d-lookups, but unfortunately it did make it run fairly slow. :/ I may end up putting in a subreport, but ideally it would be nice with a split screen for the user to have the option of inputting at either spot. Hopefully I can find a way to format the split form more efficiently.