basic (sorry) question

[wokeeffe]

I'm new to access and this forum, so sorry for such a basic question. I'm trying to tweak the "customer service" template. I want to have the ability to add a 2nd customer, and three other people to each matter record (realtor, other attorney, loan officer, etc.). I can add the field names, and I try to duplicate the properties of the "customer" field in the template, but it's not working. Keep getting an error that I'm entering wrong kind of data in field. I need each of the extra fields (2nd customer, realtor, attorney, loan officer) to act like the customer field, but not simply duplicate what I've entered in customer (that was the result of one of my early glitched). I want to be able to click the field, and if its a new contact, offer a data entry "contacts" form to complete. It seems like such a basic thing I'm trying to do, but very frustrated I can't figure it out intuitively.



Again, I'm sure this is a bit basic for the forum, but thanks in advance for any help, or referral to other resources to figure this out. Thanks! William

[jzwp11]

Welcome to the forum!

The situation you describe actually is not so basic. If you want to associate more than one customer with an item that will require a major structural change to the database because now you have a one(item)-to-many(customers) relationship. Of course, when you change the underlying table structure, all forms, queries and reports that were tied to that original structure are no longer valid.

...I'm entering wrong kind of data in field.

As to the error you mention, I would suspect that whoever created the template used lookup fields at the table level but that is only a guess since I don't have Access 2010 & thus cannot access the template to which you refer. Having lookups (combo and listboxes) at the table level are not recommended even though Access has this capability. For more on the reasons why it is not a good idea, you should check out this site. Combo and list boxes are fine for use on forms.

Now the question is whether you want to radically change the template or just create your own database. In either case, you will need to understand the concept of database normalization. Here is a site that has a basic summary of what normalization is.