When to use Subform vs not?

[Frank]

I have a form with a total of 16 controls. Most of them
are combo boxes. When I run the 'analyze performance'
wizard, it tells me I have too many controls and should
break it out into subforms to improve performance.

The form must remain in a continuous form, not a single
form, or a datasheet and by creating a subform, it forces
the property change from a continuous form to a single
form.

Do I REALLY have to use a subform in this case, or is
there a way to use a subform and still have the main form
in a continuous setting?

Thanks in advance.
Frank

 

[Andrew Smith]

Does it work as it is? You don't have to do what the analyser tells you - if
aint broke, don't fix it.

 

[Allen Browne]

The key thing is to understand WHY the wiz. makes these recommendations.
Then you can make an informed decision whether to follow it or not.

If most of these combo boxes have the same RowSource so you can pick the
same kinds of thing (first choice, 2nd choice, more choices), the splitting
the data into a related table would be a very good idea. Otherwise you have
more than a dozen fields to seach through to answer a simple question such
as "Who has this as one of their choices?"

More information on why you may want to use the first normal form, see:
http://databases.about.com/library/weekly/aa081901a.htm