Timetable-like form

  • Thread starter Thread starter Dickie Black
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D

Dickie Black

Hi,

I've been posting quite a lot the past day or so and have received a lot of
helpful replies. I have now hit a bit of a wall, as I'm no longer sure
*what* I need to do, as opposed to *how*. Let me explain:

I am attempting to record the teaching sessions of my department from paper
based, hand written timetables. To make it easy for the data-entry folk, I
am trying to make my form look as much like a paper form as possible. A
standard timetable has 4 teaching sessions a day, each between specific,
constant times, so a total of 20 per week - click a session, type what it
was, select who taught it from a list, and this information is then stored
in a table containing the full session information.

What I think I need to do is create a single 'Session' form and display it
as a subform 20 times, with each subform control filtering the data in an
individual way. Or do I in fact need to create 20 subforms, each filtering
the data differently?

My head is really starting to spin with this, and I 'm probably over looking
quite a few things, so any and all help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

Dickie Black
 
I too don't precisely understand what you need, however...

IF you can sort the data into session time order so that a record exists for
each teacher for each session, free sessions included
THEN you should be able to create a multi column report with 5 columns (1
for each day), which would result in 4 rows for each teacher. Create this
for all teachers with no grouping.
FINALLY use this as a subreport in a main report that has all the pretty
headings etc... and is grouped by teacher.

If you need any further assistance please reply to the newsgroup.

HTH
Sam
 
Sam,

The report you suggest sounds perfect for reproducing the timetables once
the data has been entered, but I need to do it *before* the data has been
entered. That is, I need a blank timetable on screen, selectable for course
and week, that will then allow data to entered or modified. Something that
is occcuring to me as I type and I'm going to try and describe it so that
someone can point out to me what I'm not doing right:

First, I'm going to forget about using bound textboxes, and use unbound ones
instead. If I create 20 boxes on the form with OnClick events that open a
bound data entry form and set time and date field values to the correct
session. The user then enters the session description and teacher. On
closing this form, the values for the unbound controls (or just labels, for
that matter) would then be set to the newly entered description etc. This
should work for new data.

Old data, such as when selecting a week/course that has already been entered
is going to need some creative coding in the OnCurrent event for the unbound
form, to alter the values for the unbound controls depending on the whether
a record exists for that session. Basically, I think I need some code that
searches for a record for each session, then sets the value of the relevant
text box, although I don't really know how I'd do that bit.

Hopefully, this isn't all meaningless rambling and may provide enough
information for someone to suggest a way of doing this...

Thanks,

Dickie
 
Ooops... I was just in the Reports newsgroup prior to reading your message,
I guess I just read form as report... I'm not getting any younger you
know!!!!

I do have one possible suggestion to consider...
Could you create a dummy temp table, that has a field for each day of the
week (or more likely, multiple fileds for each week day) and that contains
just 4 records, 1 for each session. You use this table for data entry only.
Once complete, you do an update/append query (probably a union query) to
shove it all in the real tables, and then wipe the four records from the
dummy and append four new blank ones. As you move to a new teacher you do an
append query to update these dummy records.

Not sure if this would be easier than your thoughts...

Sam
 
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