Printing selected records according to marked checkboxes?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Leslie
  • Start date Start date
L

Leslie

I'm trying to figure out the best way to create a
customized instruction manual, and I just can't get my
brain wrapped around it.

What I want is this, or something that can do basically
the same thing:

1. User gets a form with a customer name and a checkbox or
dropdown list for each possible option that customer could
have selected.
2. User selects the options for that customer, which are
saved as new record(s) somewhere.
3. User prints a report based on just that one customer
and the options selected. Each option selected corresponds
to a single record in another table, and the report should
include only those records.

So, we get this new customer, Jane. Jane has options A, C,
D and G. We want to keep track of the fact that she has
those options, and print a report for her than then
includes the information on just those option, to create a
custom user guide for her.

Any way of doing this? Better yet, does anyone have an
example database that does something similar that I could
start with?
 
Just to note, I'm not necessarily looking for detailed
step-by-step instructions - even just a general idea of
how to make something like this work would be great.

Thanks!
 
Yes, there are ways of doing that but you need to give a more detailed
explanation of what you're doing. Right now all we know is that you
have customers and options. That isn't enough. The option isn't on
the customer it's on some THING. What is that thing?

An application is modeled on some real world entities and the
relationships between them. What are those entities?

HTH
 
Sorry, I had though that by explaining it in more general
terms it might spark a connection to something someone had
done before!

A neighbor, who has started a small landscaping business
to supplement his post-retirement social security income,
wants to do two things: Keep track of the types of plants
in each customer's yard, and provide each customer with a
report that explains how to care for each of the types of
plants. The information on each plant (in one table, one
record per plant) would include the plant name, a general
description of that plant, watering and feeding
requirements, other maintenance requirements, what to
expect in the winter, and common pests/problems to look
out for. These would all be just basic text or memo
fields.

He has a very stable list of about 50 plants that will be
in his database.

He wants to be able to go in and enter a customer's name,
and somehow select the specific plants this customer has
(checkboxes? drop-down lists?) from a user-friendly form,
and then have a report generated for that customer that
includes the plant information for each of the plants in
that customer's yard.

The form doesn't have to look up what types of plants are
in the database at that moment - that list of plants will
be very stable, so its not a problem to have a separate
item on the form for each record in the plants table.

I'm not at all locked into any one way of doing this --
especially since I don't have a clue so far as to how to
proceed!

Thanks for any help you can give and any suggestions you
can make.
 
CustomerTbl
CustID pk
CustName etc

PlantTbl
PlantID pk
Plantdetails etc

SiteTbl
CustID
PlantID
etc eg Date

Set relation ships to produce report
I would forget checkboxes for plants as you would have difficulty if adding
a new plant
Just a rough guide
 
DL leaped in with some suggested table setups so we'll go with that
for explanation.

tblPlant will be a lookup table. It will have the name and all of the
info your gardener wants for instructions for the care and feeding,
etc. You'll probably want the plant instructions field to be memo
type rather than text.

I'd recommend using a form/subform layout for ease of use. To do
that, you'll base a form on tblCustomer and leave room for a subform
control toward the lower half of the form. Then base another form on
tblSite. this new form should have no header or footer and should
display in continuous form vies. The naming convention I use for
subforms is to prefix ""suf" to the base form name to readily identify
it in the Forms window. In this case it would be "sufSite". Keep
this form to a fairly small size with the largest text control taking
up the left half of the form. Close the form. Re-open frmCustomer in
design mode and click the Restore button to reduce the form's size.
Move your windows around so that you can find sufSite in the
Database|Forms window while you still see the lower part of
"frmCustomer". Drag sufSite to the lower part of frmCustomer and
release the mouse. Maximize the view of frmCustomer and adjust your
controls on the form. If all has gone well, you will be able to run
your form and enter customer info at the top of the form and plant
site info in the subform records. Note that a second subfomr record
will try to open as soon as you type into the first one.

Play with it and perhaps re-do the whole process a few times until
you're getting what you want.

Post back with problems. Also, you may want to lurk
microsoft.public.access.tablesdesign, and ...Forms.

HTH
 
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