Need help with table set-up and Thanks!

[AccessKay]

I’m about to finish my first database and am in the planning stages to create
another. I want to express my gratitude to all that helped me with this. I
learned more with the help of this group in three months than in three years
of reading books and taking classes. I have the utmost respect for all of
you kind people. I just hope that I’ll be able to find you all when they
close down this site.

I need some guidance about my table set-up. I’m going to have a data table
that will be updated each month for employee, project and hours worked. I
want to have a master table for projects and would like to have a one-to-many
relationship with my data table so that if a new project pops up in my data
table, I’ll know about it. I have two obstacles about doing this.

1. Sometimes the project number in my data table will be truncated. I know
that it will be impossible to establish referential integrity so what’s a
good way of handling this. The only idea I have which I have not tried
before is to do an update query on my data table to add the missing parts but
not sure how to go about doing this.

2. My projects that are nonbilliable will remain the same from month to
month but new billable projects will be added monthly. These will not be in
my master project table. Should I separate the data into two tables
(billable and nonbillable)? Would this be best?

Thank you very much for any suggestions.

 

[KARL DEWEY]

Ok, I'll try to put all the steps in this post.
BACKUP DATABASE BACKUP DATABASE BACKUP
DATABASE

Open Project table in design, insert a row, name it something like ProjID,
set the DataType to Autonumber, and save. This field is automatically
populated.

Open Project Data table in design, insert a row, name it same as you did in
Project table, set the DataType to number - long integer, and save.

Run an update query to copy the contents of the autonumber field to the
Project Data table field. Then run a query to see how many records in the
Project Data table has the new field empty. Fix these by filling in the
correct data.

Open the Relationship window. If you have a relationship set between the two
tables delete it. Create a relationship between the autonumber field that
the number field of the Project Data table, selecting Referential Integerity
and Cascade Update.

Use a form/subform for project/project data and set the Master/Child link on
the autonumber/number fields. When you add records to the subform (project
data table) it will automatically enter the number in the table (the cascade
update does it).

 

[AccessKay]

This is what I needed but I can’t try it out yet because I’m going to have to
brush up on update queries. I never really needed to use this query before
but I see how useful it can be. Thanks again Karl and I hope to see your
name out there in the future.