hello everyone.
i'm needing some help with access. like programming its got me totally stalled on even where to start.
i have some sample database programs we've been using but they no longer are supported and we can not really use them but they might help down the road in figuring out whats needed.
anyways heres the deal and i don't know if i need to design (or even how to for that matter) outputs first then figure out how to get the information to it.
but i figure if i can get help tackling this stuff 1 thing at a time as quick as possible i might make some headway on this.
right now we have access to the source i info that can be exported to excel files so i need to find out how to get those source files imported into access and figured out so it can use it on it queries, tables, etc.
here's what i am looking for.
we have 9 districts for vendors i assume each district which has to be saved separately would need specific file names in order be imported, and the importing would need to add some information to each imported file based on the file name i guess. for example right now each export excel file from our source does not contain the full route numbers only the last 4 digits, but each district has the same first 4 digits so for example when it imports district 1 based on the specific file location it would add the first districts 4 digit beginning to whatever route was listed.
the imported files contains customer information for each vendor, what i am looking for in output is a variety of things and i think the old programs we had before ran these queries in the beginning so the printing of the lists for vendors was real quick. it made everything a one or two button push to get what was needed where the new system takes a lot longer and does not produce everything we used to get.
we had multiple reports we would print
ones for the whole center for every vendor in every district at once for various publications.
other cis (customer information sheets) we'd print on a route/drop basis and could contain customers active for just that day, a full list, just certain publications (we currently have like 9 separate publications vendors deliver), etc.
another report we like to print is a drop list report for locations that vendors do bulk drops and the places pass out the publications that contains customers name and address. the old one used the Begin of an address and if anything on that vendors specific cis list had something that begin like that it included it. for example say a vendor had a bulk drop at a business building 50 main street suites 1 to 99. the drop list program looked for anything at 50 main street (cis lists are always the same on the address) and it would put anything that started with that on the list with the corresponding suite number for the vendor to leave at the drop location so whomever took the papers knew who got what. is also separated this by publication with a total amount of each put at the bottom of each pub listing.
the another section or program needs to be able to read/import another set of excel files for complaints and be able to run complaint reports broken up by vendors/routes.
while this all sounds easy i know its not, well not for me at least.
when i get a chance i'll take some screen caps of outputted pages from the old un-updated program but i don't think i can upload the program or share it because it might contain information that i can not put on a forum posting, i think some screen caps will have to be edited as well to avoid this same issue. the source files can easily be edited to only include samples of what it outputs for excel if needed. i think the main thing on that is seeing what info it shows.
thanks in advance for anyone that can help or steer me in the right way. i don't have lots of free time to work on this but the more i can get done and quicker the more time it will save in the field allowing for smoother operations plus i think this process will give me a starting foundation on how to use access.
thanks
ryan