Re: DDMS to Access Fill Cells Help!

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<riccojs@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1164813509.214201.66610@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Jeff,

Sorry a bit new to this. I do have a way to do the copy down and I will
list it but it will only work for one of my fields (Tech_Name) the
others would have to cross checked with call number and then paste only
if call number matches to first record in the seqence of calls.

I'm not there. I don't know what you mean by "copy down".


Here is the whole picture. We have a system called DDMS it uses about
300 DBF files for its backend which are located in several different
folders. I have not been able to find the Key file that ties it all
together in DDMS. (Text Based system)

Out of all the files I only need four of them for the information that
I need, this is to make information available to sales who don't have
access to DDMS.

DDMS is old and the information is stored in ways that it souldn't be.
Management dosn't want me to touch these original files. I copy the 4
need files to a folder for me to work from.

I have designed a Maintenance program to organize the information and
it runs every morning after fresh copies of the DBF files are placed in
my working folder. In access I link to these 4 DBF files. (customer
info - 3000 records, machine info - 250000 records, cost - 3000
records, Misc - 5000 records). I have used relationships

?What does this mean? How have you used relationships? Where?

and there is
no key fields, customer info and machine info can only be linked via
customer number and the other two by system number to machine info
only.

A picture is worth a thousand words -- can you provide a table structure
that helps clarify what this means? For example:

tblCustomer
CustomerNumber
FirstName
...

tblMachine
MachineID
CustomerNumber
...

tblCost
SystemNumber
...

tblMisc
SystemNumber
...


The data in the DBF's is bad there is all kinds of place holders
(Spaces before information) and dates/times that are split into
multiple columns and several columns of data that I don't need.

Any chance that the import process can separate the input fields by
delimiters?

I run
several Queries to remove spaces, Dups, and combine dates and times
into there own fields. I do this with SQL and code Tech_Name is only a
number

?You have a field called "Tech_Name" that is a number?

I created a table that relates the number to a name which I use
before the final table is completed, to convert number to name.

Why the two-step process? How do you or Access know how to "relate the
number to a name"?


After my Maintenance program is done I have one table with 250,000
records that is linked to from the search program that I wrote.

Is this the table structure you described in your first post? If so, why
are you (re-)creating the un-normalized structure you receive in your
database?

So I do
have a backend DB and a Front End user interface they can not enter or
change data. I have some other bells and whistles that are not relevant
to this.

The problem is most of the information comes from one table and in this
table is the service calls.

None of the four tables you described earlier was named "service calls"...
where is this information coming from?

DDMS uses around 25 characters for each
call in the "call problem" column and one service call could have
1000's of characters. That is why there is a call number for every line
and then a Sequence number for each line with the same call number.

I get this part from the data example you provided. But you are NOT
required to duplicate a poor structure in your read-only database you are
building for lookup.

All
the information (Tech, Dates, Times, and some other info) is only on
the very first line of any given call and the rest of the sequence
numbers are blank for (Tech, Dates, Times, and some other information)

If the information was organized better in this one table with multiple
tables

I don't understand what you mean by this.

then I could easily fix the issues but it is in one Table (Not
the one I created but the original, the one I create is the above table
with all the other info integrated into it)

Now I'm even more confused -- can you "draw" a map explaining the pieces and
how you get from one to the next?


I know this is a big picture but I tried to tell you all I could. The
above code

No code above...

came from one of these Google groups not sure which one.

I found this code below and it does work.

What does "work" mean to you here?

It does not do any checking
to to see if it belongs to that call.

Again, we're not there, we can't see what you're seeing. "...to see if it
belongs to that call" means nothing when we don't know what "it" and "that"
refer to.

It just copies down

What do you mean by "copies down"?

until another
cell is found that is not blank.

Not there, can't see ... what "blank"? What "cell"?

Now that I have tried it I really
can't use it without some checks involved because some calls don't have
any tech or date info and using the code below does add info to these
fields that should be blank.

What "checks"? Why should the fields be blank? ?!What fields?!


'This is in a Module and called in a update query

Public Function SupplyMissingValue(V As Variant) As Variant

Static Stored As Variant

If Not IsNull(V) Then
Stored = V
End If

SupplyMissingValue = Stored

End Function



I may just end up dropping this but I would like to get it to work,
some thing like:

IF Tech is not null "copy" then get call number in current record, go
to next call number if = to last call number "paste" tech name in tech
field Loop until last record. Or something along those lines. I need to
do this for tech name and three date fields.

Sorry if I'm seeming dense, but I'm just not seeing enough information to
offer what I would consider meaningful and useful suggestions.


Your help is greatly appreciated and I do understand if you don't want
to help knowing now what I have to deal with.

You may want to consider finding a student who could take on this project as
part of a school assignment, or perhaps someone who can offer further
assistance on a consulting basis. This seems to be a bit bigger than a
breadbox...<g>

Best of luck on your project

Regards

Jeff Boyce
Microsoft Office/Access MVP


Thanks
John



.

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