Re: Please Help...Using the column function within a query field

On Fri, 31 Mar 2006 10:22:06 -0800, newsneakers
<newsneakers@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Oh boy... After reading that article.. no wonder why.........
That's exactly the merry-go-round I've been dealing with. So what do you
suggest? Just get rid of the lookup column in the original table? and put the
data? It seems inappropriate to duplicate the same data in two separate
tables (ProjEng in the Projects table -- and the same names in the AssignedTo
Table).
Do you have any other suggestions? I'm getting confused here.

Lookup TABLES are fine, and are used routinely.

But you need to use them in the right place - on a Form, not in a
table.

It is emphatically *not* necessary to use a Lookup Field in a table to
do so. You can go into your table and for each lookup field, view its
Properties; select the Lookup tab; and change it to Textbox instead of
Combo Box. This will leave the numeric link in your table (which is
fine, and appropriate) - but you'll be able to *see* it now.

You may be making the (rather common) assumption that "if it's not in
the table then I cannot see it or use it". That assumption is WRONG.
Tables are not designed for seeing or printing data - they're designed
for STORING data, and should be kept "under the hood". If you want to
see the ProjEng name in association with project data there are many
ways to do it. The two most common are to use a Combo Box on a Form;
the bound column of the combo being the ID, and the only visible
column being the looked-up name. That way the computer sees the
unique, stable, short numeric ID and the user sees a person's name,
and they both are happy.

For printing names on a Report, you can create a Query joining the
Projects table to the "people" table; you would pull the project
information from the projects table, and the name information from the
lookup table.

John W. Vinson[MVP]
.

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