creating address adp. that has 1 contact in multiple categories?

[JPT]

I am new to access. I work for a small not for profit organization that has
lots of address labels. The problem I am having is that i don't know how to
create an address database that will let me have one contact in multiple
categories. For example I have a John Doe that is on our Newspaper mailing
list as well as our youth rally mailing list. I only want to print out the
newspaper people at this time and not the youth rally people. How do I set
up the database for this problem?

Thank you to anyone who can help in this issue
JPT

 

[NetworkTrade]

for each record (i.e. John Doe) have a yes/no or 1/0 field for each of the
categories.

then for a mailing; do the mail merge from a query - not the table - and
set the query up with the appropriate criteria. In your example; if 'yes'
for newspaper.

Or to avoid hitting the same people twice when you do the youth rally (after
you have already done the newspaper list) then select only those that are
'yes' for youth AND 'no' for newspaper (since the 'yes' for newspaper were
already processed)....

 

[Duane Hookom]

I think it would be a mistake to create multiple yes/no fields. If you want
to add another category, you should never have to add a field, controls to
forms and/or reports, modify your queries,...etc.

A normalized approach would have a table of individuals, a table for
categories, and a table that matches categories with individuals. If an
individual is on more than one mailing list, they would have more than one
record in the category/individual table.