I am new to Access. I created a table with the appropriate fields which
include a couple of drop down menus. I then created a form for data inupt. I
realized that I had left a couple of options out of one of the drop down
menus so i went back to the table and added the options. But those options do
not appear in the form...? How do I get the form to update as I revise the
table?
You're another victim of the misleading, limited and inadequate "Lookup
Wizard". This was a new feature in A2002 or A2003 and has caused people no end
of trouble like what you're seeing: see
http://www.mvps.org/access/lookupfields.htm
for a critique.
Fields in a table *contain data*. They do not contain dropdown boxes, or
listboxes - these are display tools. As you have seen, putting a combo box in
a table does not guarantee that that display tool carries over correctly to
the Form!
I would suggest opening the table in design view and changing the Lookup
property for each of these fields from Combo Box to Textbox. This will let you
see in the table what actually IS in the table (usually a numeric ID, rather
than looked-up text).
Create a Table for each "lookup" - the only time I'd use a list of values
instead of table/query is if the list is very static and very short (e.g.
Gender "M;F"). If you'll ever be editing or adding to the list, a table is
much more convenient.
Then use the Combo Box Wizard on the toolbar to add Combo Boxes to your form
(not to your table) based on these lookup tables.