Check box and listings

  • Thread starter Thread starter Guest
  • Start date Start date
G

Guest

I'm creating a press release tracking db. I would like to enter a title of
the press release that we mailed out. That would have the primary key.
Beside it, I would like to check off who we sent it to (multiple checks
allowed). I have a table with the names of recipients that it would look up.
I thought then it would place the recipients by the associated id into a new
table for tracking. I need some help with the check boxes and structure.
Thanks.
 
Mike,

Check boxes isn't the way to go. I would actually start with yor design:
what you have is a classic many-to-many relationship between press
releases and recipients, so what you need is a structure with a table
for press releases, like:

tblPressReleases
PR_ID (Primary Key, possibly an autonumber)
Title
PRDate
Author
etc.

a table for Recipients, like:

tblRecipients
R_ID (Primary Key, possibly an autonumber)
Recip_Name
Address
etc.

and a table to resolve the many-to-many relationship, by breaking it
down to two one-to-many ones; it will actually represent mailings, with
a record for each individual envelope sent out (using the traditional
post model), like:

tblMailings
PR_ID (Foreign Key, indexed, join to table tblPressReleases)
R_ID (Foreign Key, indexed, join to table tblRecipients)
SentDate


You could also add a lookup table for ways of sending (post, courier,
e-mail, fax etc.) and put its PK as a FK in tblMailings.

Now, with regard to data entry: in the base scenario without the way of
sendig field in tblMailings, where by all you need is the two foreign
keys and a date, I would use a multi-select listbox for recipients on my
form, with some code behind it to create the records in the table at the
click of a button.
In the enchanced scenario, requiring more than one varying selection per
record (PR_ID and SentDate are the same for all records added in one
go), I would employ a subform in continuous forms view, with a combo box
for recipient and another for way of sending. This does not require
coding, and could be used in the previous case as well, but the
multi-select listbox makes data entry faster.

HTH,
Nikos
 
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