Adding one attachment to many records

[tsn.s]

Hi

I was wondering if it is possible to add one attachment to multiple records. I don't think there will be many attachments within the database and most of them will be word documents. However there could potentially be 20 records all with the same attachment so it would be good to just attach a file once but to multiple records.

[boblarson]

Instead of using the Attachment feature, I would just store a link to the document's location on a shared server. It would also keep the size of the database down.

But the main answer to your question is this. If you need to store the same item, or data, in more than one place then your design is likely flawed and not properly normalized. In this case you would have a separate table for attachments and an Attachment ID and you would simply store the attachment one time in the attachments table and then store the attachment ID from that table in the other place where there are multiple records.