Lookup wizard problem

[Tagfc]

Hi,
I have two tables, one with my products & one with their category & an associated photo. I want to have the field in the product table for category as a look-up field from the category table. I have used the wizard & am able to access the data in the product field & that seems ok. The trouble is that the lookup field in the product table keeps becoming a number field (as opposed to text). This causes problems later in with persistent "type mismatch" errors. Can anyone shed some light on this?

 

[John Vinson]

Hi,
I have two tables, one with my products & one with their category & an associated photo. I want to have the field in the product table for category as a look-up field from the category table. I have used the wizard & am able to access the data in the product field & that seems ok. The trouble is that the lookup field in the product table keeps becoming a number field (as opposed to text). This causes problems later in with persistent "type mismatch" errors. Can anyone shed some light on this?

You're another victim of Microsoft's misdesigned, misleading, and all
but useless Lookup Wizard.

The lookup field IS A NUMBER. That very simple fact is concealed from
your view by the combo box displaying the category name; but what's
actually stored in your table is the numeric foreign key to the ID of
the Category table.

I'd suggest a) never using Lookup fields at all, and b) never using
table datasheets for anything except design and debugging. Instead
create a Form for your data entry and editing; use a Combo Box on the
form to store the (numeric!!) categoryID while displaying the text
category.