copy and paste field contents

[lynn atkinson]

I have a database with 490+ records. I want to transfer
data from one field to another without manually copying
and pasting each of the records. Any ideas on how to do
this quickly?

 

[Cheryl Fischer]

The recommended way to do this is by using an Update Query.

 

[Van T. Dinh]

Cheryl gave you the solution but I wonder why you want to store the same
data items twice?

 

[Cheryl Fischer]

Good question! I missed that entirely ... not enough Starbuck's in my
system yet, I guess.

 

[Van T. Dinh]

Sounds like me ... I live on caffeine (and nicotine <bad>) and I am sure the
quality of my responses is proportional to the caffeine concentration in my
blood stream.

 

[Cheryl Fischer]

(and nicotine <bad>)

Me, too. But, we probably shouldn't tell anyone else!

 

[Guest]

Thanks for the reply.
The reason is I need to have a history. The number is a
job or post ID and the person can leave one position in
the company and start another. They therefore have to have
a new contract issued, but we want to keep track of any
previous positions that person has held. The way I have
set it up, employee no1 leaves post 10 and starts in post
20. They have a contract for post 10 which has a contract
number 5 which is now flagged as old contract,but the
details need to be kept and a new contract (number 6)is
issued. Does this make sense? Originally I had the current
post number on the contract and it was the link field, but
I found that when I issued a new contract, this number was
changed in the old contract. I therefore have to identify
the post ID number in the contracts table.
Dont know if this makes sense, but with this modification,
it works the way I want it. I am a bit of a novice and am
cutting my teeth on quite a complicated system, but am
learning all the time. Any suggestions are welcome!

 

[Van T. Dinh]

Then you actually have a Many-to-Many relationship between Persons and
Positions. I am not sure from your post whether Positions are related to
Contracts on a One-to-One basis on the Contract depends on both the Person
and the Position.

Either way, just to cater for the Many-to-Many relationship, you will need
at least 3 Tables:

* tblPerson just to hold personal details.

* tblPosition to store details regarding the Position

* tblPersonPosition to hold the link between a Person and (the history) of
Positions he/she have held. You probably should have the StartDate and
EndDate for each Position that the Person held / holds.

If the focus is reversed in the last point, you can see that a Position can
be held by different Persons at different times. Each Record of the
tblPersonPosition is a Record of a particular Person holding a particular
Position at a specific time period (since a Person can be in Position 10,
then move to Position 20 for a period of time and then move back to Position
10).

It can actually be quite complex. I suggest you should read up on the
Relational Database Design Theory and check your Table Structure to ensure
that the Structure follows the Relational Database Design Principles.

 

[Guest]

Brilliant! Thanks for your help I will put it in place.
I am actually fixing things as I am going along as I
obviously didnt plan well enough. Things keep crawling out
of the woodwork which werent mentioned in the beginning.
However, I am getting there, but this piece of advise is
most useful. Thanks