Combo Box question!!

[johnjohnson]

Hey everyone , i need some help and advice!

I have a Products form, and I would like a combo box to display a list of values for Vendors, but I want it to store the VendorID but SHOW the VendorName in the table.

Two questions:

Is that doable?

And if it is, would that go under the "good database" category? Is it better for the table to store the VendorID or the Name of the vendor?



please help! thakn you!

[hertfordkc]

Hey everyone , i need some help and advice!

I have a Products form, and I would like a combo box to display a list of values for Vendors, but I want it to store the VendorID but SHOW the VendorName in the table.

I believe you want VendorID to be the bound column, and you want to include at least two columns, VendorID and VendorName, for the combo box. However, if you don't want to display the VendorID you will have to set its width to 0".
So you have at least 3 fields on the combo box property sheet which you will need to adjust: Bound Column, Column Width?, and No. of columns.

Two questions:

Is that doable?

And if it is, would that go under the "good database" category? Is it better for the table to store the VendorID or the Name of the vendor?

please help! thakn you!

Generally, your tables should contain unique pieces of information. Thus, VendorName should be stored in the Vendor table, and other references should be to the vendor key.

[alansidman]

If you are doing a lookup from a form, it will store the value as the ID. This is good db principles. It uses less data space, is more efficient, reduces errors and is a good practice. If you need to see the actual value, join your two tables in a query and see the results in the query or report.

Look at this regarding data normalization.

http://www.deeptraining.com/litwin/d...aseDesign.aspx