Parent with five children tables - single table

[micromoth]

I had one 50 field table, with a 50 field form and a subform. I now
have a parent with five child tables. I have a design problem. I hate
subforms as a general rule I think they look dreadful and my users find
them difficult to use.

I need to get opinions on the easiest "design" to use.

Option 1
I would more or less like to keep the big form I have and place the
data into the relevant tables. Is this possible?

Option 2
Add five subforms to a form. Not my prefered option

Option 3
Have the parent data on a form with five command buttons that open tto
he five other forms. My worry about this is that a user would forget
to click a second button.

Option 4
Heared a lot about tabbed forms, and I can see they might be whats
needed. Are they any good?

Any advice, other solutions to this problem or comparison of options,
greatly appreciated.

 

[Klatuu]

I had one 50 field table, with a 50 field form and a subform. I now
have a parent with five child tables. I have a design problem. I hate
subforms as a general rule I think they look dreadful and my users find
them difficult to use.

I need to get opinions on the easiest "design" to use.

Option 1
I would more or less like to keep the big form I have and place the
data into the relevant tables. Is this possible?

Possible if you use unbound forms, but this would be code intensive.

Option 2
Add five subforms to a form. Not my prefered option

This would create a very busy form that would be confusing.

Option 3
Have the parent data on a form with five command buttons that open tto
he five other forms. My worry about this is that a user would forget
to click a second button.

Only slightly better than Option 1. Keeping all your tables in sync would
be trickey.

Option 4
Heared a lot about tabbed forms, and I can see they might be whats
needed. Are they any good?

I thinks this would be your best bet. They could still be subforms to your
parent form. This will help keep the tables in sync. Note that it is not
necessary for subforms to be in continuous or datasheet format. You can have
a single record view.

My I also suggest Option 5?
It would be a variation of Option 3. It is one I have used because it is
often convenient for the user to be able to see the parent form data while
they are working on the sub form data. So, you have one subform control on
the form. You have 5 subforms. Each command button changes the source
object of the subform to one of the subforms. Here is a snippet of where I
do this. Note the changing of the width property of the subform control to
ccommodate the size of the subform object. You could change the height, too,
but I have it designed so only the width changes:

Me.fsubTableEdit.SourceObject = "frmsubChartOfAccounts"
DoCmd.Maximize
Me.fsubTableEdit.Width = 5616
Me.cmdChartOfAccounts.FontBold = True
Me.cmdPerformAcctUnit.FontBold = False
Me.cmdTaskTable.FontBold = False
Me.cmdAttributes.FontBold = False

Note I also make the command button caption for the current subform bold.
Now, as to the user fogetting a button, you could do a check when the user
tries to move away from the parent record to see if all the required child
data has been completed before allowing the user to move off the current
record.

 

[ManningFan]

You DO realize you can make them flat and borderless, thereby making
them look exactly like the rest of the form. Then they wouldn't "look
dreadful". It may also solve the "difficult to use" issue as well.

 

[micromoth]

Afraid not. It is not covered in any of my books. I assume it is done
mainly in the design view settings. So, which ones and what would I
set these to? I also think you are right, it probably will solve the
"difficult to use" issue.

 

[micromoth]

Thanks Klatuu
I think I will try out the tab forms initially as my VBA is week.
Thanks very much for the assesment of the options. You have given me a
good idea as to how dificult each of the options can be to implement,
which not something you get an honest answer to in a book. Thanks
again

 

[ManningFan]

right-click on the subform control and go to the Properties. In there
you should see properties like Border Width, Border Color, Special
Effect and Border Style. Tinker with their settings, you can set the
Special Effect to "Flat", and the Border STyle to "Transparent" to
begin with, and when the form is active you'ld never even know there
was a subform present.