Auto cross referencing??

[Moo]

Hi,

I am creating a found/lost property database for my workplace.

One feature we would like is that when items are found and entered they are
checked against a list of items that have been reported lost to see if we
have the item.

We would probably like to use a drop down combo box for the main category
(i.e. mobile phone) with different combo boxes for other options/details
(i.e. Nokia, Samsung etc) when entering the item. A list of matching items
would then be on one side of the form listing all 'Nokia mobile phones'
reported lost (from another form with the contact details of the person who
reported the item lost), it would then be nice to click and bring up the
relevant record thus reducing the need to search through each mobile phone
record everytime we have one handed in.

Can I do this? If so how?

The aim of this is to automatically match items handed in to items that have
been previously reported lost so hopefully we can get more stuff back to the
relevant owners!

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Many thanks,

Rodney

 

[Jeff Boyce]

Rodney

Yes. Are you prepared to do the coding?

From your description, you'd need to either have a LOT of lookup table rows
for the categories of things that can be lost (or found), OR you'd need to
trust that the free-text data entry of lost items was handled in exactly the
same way as for the found items.

Access isn't as smart as people, so the following would probably be missed
by Access, but "found" by a person:

Nokia mobile phone
Mokia mobile phoen

And have you already determined your normalized data structure before
beginning on forms display?