[AccessD] Two stupid questions from newbie

Always remember, Barbara, in the words of The Simpsons, there are no stupid
questions, only stupid people :)

1. Lots of people here will argue that your Issues should really be a
separate table joined to the first one on the primary key, but for such a
simple database that might be overkill. What you can do instead is this:
just put all the words in as you want (wealth, fame, power, etc.) and then
search on that field using LIKE. There are some tricks to using LIKE,
however, notably:
   * stands for any number of characters
   ? stands for one character

Thus to find records containing both wealth and power you can use this
expression:
    LIKE "*wealth*power"
To enter the search criterion, on the toolbar you will see a button with a
filter on it. If you hover the mouse over it, the control tip will say
"Filter by Form". That's the button you want. When you click it, you'll be
presented with a blank form. Go to the Issues field and type in the whole
expression including the word LIKE:
    LIKE "wealth*power"
Then click the button to the right of the previous button (its tooltip says
Apply Filter). That will filter all the records so you only see the ones
that match. When you're done, the next button to the right removes the
filter, and once again you can see all the records.

2. If you base your reports on the table underlying the form and then apply
the filter technique described above, the report will automatically show
only the filtered records. So you kill two birds with one stone.

There are good reasons, however, to consider a second table to record the
Issues, but that is a little more complex. For one thing, you wouldn't have
to keep typing in all the words, you could pick them from a list instead. If
you want to try this approach, we'll explain the steps, but perhaps the
simplest one is enough for you at the moment.

hth,
Arthur

On 3/17/08, Barbara Mende <barbara at moosehill.com> wrote:
>
> I'm a newbie not only to this list, but to Access.  I've worked with
> FileMaker and Summation, but not with SQL.
>
>
> This is a small Access 2002 database with basically one data entry form,
> mostly text, no calculations, no relationships.  Not even lookup
> tables.  It's basically for searching for and reporting on info.
>
>
>   I would like to do two things which I don't seem able to and which I'm
> sure are painfully obvious.
>
>
> 1.  I have a text field which describes issues.  Let's call them wealth,
> fame, power.  Some of the data relates to more than one of these, e.g.,
> wealth and fame.  (Actually there are about twenty of them.)
>
>
> What I'd like to do is put "wealth fame" or "wealth, fame" into the issues
> field, so I can search for either weaIth or fame and come up with the
> appropriate record. don't seem to be able to search on part of that field,
> which is a text field.  So what I've been doing is creating one record under
> "wealth," then another which is identical except that the issues field reads
> "fame."  This seems to be a waste of bytes, and also allows the likelihood
> of a search on another field bringing up duplicate records.  I tried "like"
> but that didn't do it.  If I put both wealth and fame into the issues field,
> I can't pull up either, either by filtering or by querying.
>
>
> 2.  If you thought that was dumb, this one is dumber but I'm tearing my
> hair out.  I would like to create forms and reports based on a saved filter
> result.  The instructions say it's easy:  Run the filter, select "autoform"
> or "autoreport" from the "new object" icon, and there you are.  Trouble is
> that "autoform" and "autoreport" are grayed out.  If I put them up as
> individual icons they're grayed out too.  Any ideas of what settings I've
> screwed up or how to ungray them?
>
>
> Thanks, everyone!
> Barbara
>
>
>
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