copy and paste field contents

  • Thread starter Thread starter lynn atkinson
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lynn atkinson

I have a database with 490+ records. I want to transfer
data from one field to another without manually copying
and pasting each of the records. Any ideas on how to do
this quickly?
 
Cheryl gave you the solution but I wonder why you want to store the same
data items twice?
 
Good question! I missed that entirely ... not enough Starbuck's in my
system yet, I guess.
 
Sounds like me ... I live on caffeine (and nicotine <bad>) and I am sure the
quality of my responses is proportional to the caffeine concentration in my
blood stream.
 
Thanks for the reply.
The reason is I need to have a history. The number is a
job or post ID and the person can leave one position in
the company and start another. They therefore have to have
a new contract issued, but we want to keep track of any
previous positions that person has held. The way I have
set it up, employee no1 leaves post 10 and starts in post
20. They have a contract for post 10 which has a contract
number 5 which is now flagged as old contract,but the
details need to be kept and a new contract (number 6)is
issued. Does this make sense? Originally I had the current
post number on the contract and it was the link field, but
I found that when I issued a new contract, this number was
changed in the old contract. I therefore have to identify
the post ID number in the contracts table.
Dont know if this makes sense, but with this modification,
it works the way I want it. I am a bit of a novice and am
cutting my teeth on quite a complicated system, but am
learning all the time. Any suggestions are welcome!
 
Then you actually have a Many-to-Many relationship between Persons and
Positions. I am not sure from your post whether Positions are related to
Contracts on a One-to-One basis on the Contract depends on both the Person
and the Position.

Either way, just to cater for the Many-to-Many relationship, you will need
at least 3 Tables:

* tblPerson just to hold personal details.

* tblPosition to store details regarding the Position

* tblPersonPosition to hold the link between a Person and (the history) of
Positions he/she have held. You probably should have the StartDate and
EndDate for each Position that the Person held / holds.

If the focus is reversed in the last point, you can see that a Position can
be held by different Persons at different times. Each Record of the
tblPersonPosition is a Record of a particular Person holding a particular
Position at a specific time period (since a Person can be in Position 10,
then move to Position 20 for a period of time and then move back to Position
10).

It can actually be quite complex. I suggest you should read up on the
Relational Database Design Theory and check your Table Structure to ensure
that the Structure follows the Relational Database Design Principles.
 
Brilliant! Thanks for your help I will put it in place.
I am actually fixing things as I am going along as I
obviously didnt plan well enough. Things keep crawling out
of the woodwork which werent mentioned in the beginning.
However, I am getting there, but this piece of advise is
most useful. Thanks
 
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