Contact Management Template help - adding to existing form

[Mike]

Folks,

I'm trying to use the Access 2003 Contact Management template downloaded
from Microsoft Office's web site to create a customer management database.
It has most of the items I need, but I do need to add a few small things, and
I'm having trouble performing a particular task. I'm new to Access and
databases in general, so I apologize if this is really simple.

On the template, I would like to add a list box to an existing form. I want
it to be a lookup table. For the "Contacts" form, I would like to add a
lookup table named "IndustryType", which consists of two fields,
IndustryTypeID (autonumber), and IndustryType (text). I created the lookup
in Database view, and added items like Carpentry, Plumbing, and Electrical.
I need to add more, but for the purposes of testing, I only added these three.

I then created a "IndustryTypeID" field in the "Contacts" table and created
a relationship between the IndustryTypeID fields in both the IndustryType
table and the Contacts table. Does that sound correct?
I then went into design view of the Contacts form and added a list box,
selecting as the control sources the ContactsType field from the ContactsType
table. I went through the wizard and completed. When I run it I get a error
"Control can't be edited: It's bound to the expression
'IndustryType!IndustryType.'.

Is this a relationship problem, or am I selecting the control source
improperly. I have several lookup tables I would like to create and add to
the existing form, but I wanted to properly get one working right before
trying others.
Any help would be appreciated. Thanks,

Mike

 

[Fred]

I don't know exactly where your problem is coming from, but it sounds like
you got a little fancier than you needed for someone new to access. I
didn't explore the exact error message,but lots of stuff like this gets fixed
if you rename the box on the form. (so it's not the same as the name of the
record source for the box)

Here's a simple method (that the Access experts will tell you not to do.)
Make a one field IndustryType table. Then add the field to your main
table, use the lookup wizard, and have it draw from that little table. Make
sure the field is in the Record Source of the form (e.g. if it's a query, add
it to it) and then add it to the form. Has to be a fresh "add" on the form,
if it's there already, delete it and put it back in.

After you get that working you can do it the better-but-more-complicated-way
that the experts will tell you.