Report: Pulldown Wizard Shows Up As a Number

[TrendNathaniel]

Hi.
I'm a total Access novice. I find that creating tables and using the
pulldown wizard to create pulldown menus connected to other tables is
extremely convenient since we have 20 or 30 product names - one of
which must be entered into each new record.

The problem is that once I finish entering data, when I create and
print a report, the fields that the pulldown wizard populated display
as numbers, not as text. I clicked on the report properties FORMAT and
text wasn't an option. Could you please help?

Thank you

 

[Larry Linson]

What you call the Pulldown Wizard is creating Lookup Fields in your Table.
What Lookup Fields do is to store the key value of aother Table but display
information from that other Table. The phenomenon you observe is why most of
us avoid Lookup Fields like the bubonic plague -- they seem so enticing to a
user who is looking at the data in datasheet view, but when you start doing
something with it, they rise up to bite you.

Try using a Query as the RecordSource of your report, with the Lookup Field
joined to the key Field of that other Table, and drag down the desired
information from the other Table.

You _may_ be able to solve your problem without replacing your Lookup Field
with a real relational, normalized design. I don't design DBs with Lookp
Fields and when I encounter Lookup Fields in an "inherited" database, most
often I remove them immediately and redesign the Tables.

Larry Linson
Microsoft Access MVP