Fill Multiple Fields with a Combo Box

Question

Hello Microsoft Community

I have received a lot of help with this site, thank you. I am wanting to use a combo box to fill multiple fields in the table at once. In this example, I am seeing the fields in the form, but it does not write the fields to the table, which I want in this example.

But in this form, I actually want to write the data in all three fields in the table.

I'm sure this is an easy one for all you Guru's out there.

Thank You

John K.

Answer 1

Hi John, I agree with Hans and xps. One of the principles of a relational database is that data exists in one place and one place only. There are couple of exemptions to this, but none apply to you own situation.

The control you are using for Description uses an expression as its control source. Therefore its not bound to a field in a table. That's why its not saving, But tht's the way it should work. You want to DISPLAY the related data, not store it in another table. When you want to report on it you use a query that joins your tables on the key field.

Answer 2

The way you solved it now it's all good.

The description should only be stored in 1 place: the products table. That is one of the principles of good (normalized) database design.

Answer 3

In most situations, it is not desirable to store the description in the table, since it is derived information and thus superfluous. You can retrieve the description from the part number wherever and whenever you need it.

The only exception would be if the user needs to be able to edit the description afterwards. This could lead to the same part number having different descriptions in different records. Is that really what you need?