form design question

[Christophe Schoofs]

I am a beginning MS Access user and I have 2 problems designing a form:

1)
I have 2 fields in a form:
"Video available" -> Yes/No
"Video rating" -> x/10
My question: how can I make the "Video rating" field only appear on the form
when the "Video Availabe" field is checked "Yes"?

2)
I want to list several internet-links for each record (in a pcgame
database), but the number of links can be different for each record; for
example the first record contains 3 links, the second record 1 link, the
third record 18 links, etc etc. Is this possible in some way or do I have to
make a field for each different internet link and leave most of them empty
when I don't use them on that form?

Thanks for helping me out,
Christophe

 

[Jeff Boyce]

Christophe

1 - look into "code behind forms". The generic concept is that you'll add
code to the AfterUpdate event of the checkbox that sets the .Visible
property of the "Rating" control.
(Note - for consistency of terminology with Access, tables have fields,
forms have controls)
(Note2 - consider not having the "Ratings" control flash into/out of
existence, but rather, use the .Enabled property to enable/disable the
control)

2 - It sounds like your data structure needs normalization. If you can have
1-to-many links (zero-to-many, actually), a more-normalized design has at
least two tables: whatever primary table whose records can have more than
one link, and a second table that contains one row for each primary record X
link combination. If the same links can show up associated with more than
one primary record, then a better-normalized design adds a third table, of
the links. The second table would then hold the key from the primary table
and the key from the links table. Check on normalization in Access HELP.

For your form, use a mainform/subform design, where the mainform points to
the "primary" table and the subform points to the combination table (see
second table described above).

Good luck!

Jeff Boyce
<Access MVP>