fields in form

[Pammy]

I have a form and several of the fields are using a data source which is a
table of examining officers names. On the examining officers name table, the
names are listed last, first. There are about 17,200 records and many
queries have been created some using this field. Question, the Section that
uses this, now wants the names listed as TIS first name, last name instead of
Last name, first name. If I change this on the examining officers
spreadsheet will this affect any of the previous entries or the queries that
were done or will this be from this point forward? I don't want the previous
records corrupt since there were queries built on this.

 

[Jeff Boyce]

Pammy

A basic premise of good table design is "one fact, one field". Storing BOTH
firstname and lastname in the same field leads to ... potential problems ...
like you've encountered!

That said, if the data is already stored as "LastName, FirstName", and if
you are ABSOLUTELY certain there is ALWAYS a LastName followed by a comma
followed by a space followed by a FirstName, you could use a query to
"calculate" a different display of that data. Take a look at the Left(),
Mid(), Right() and Instr() functions and use them in a query to calculate
"FirstName LastName".

Regards

Jeff Boyce
Microsoft Office/Access MVP