tricky table combine question: PLEASE HELP!

  • Thread starter Thread starter Ranx05
  • Start date Start date
R

Ranx05

OK, I have three tables containing three consecutive years o
psychological data collected on a population. Problem is, some peopl
joined the study late (i.e. show up in years 2 and 3 but not year 1
and some people dropped out (i.e. show up in year 1 and/or 2 but not i
3). What I need to do is combine the three tables into one big table
preserving all three years' worth of field data, while also retainin
all the participants, leaving null values in the fields fo
participants who didn't participate that year.
Basically, the Access join feature as far as I can tell (i'm pretty ne
to access) doesn't allow me to import all records, and everything I'v
tried to do has resulted in a make-table query that doesn't represen
all the subjects.
Can anyone help me out on this? I've been screwing with it for day
and it's really beginning to drive me nuts.
Thanks very much in advance
 
Ranx,

If I understand you correctly, this should give you what you want...

1. In one of the tables (let's say the one with Year 1 data), add a new
field, let's say you call it StudyYear.
2. Make and run an Update Query based on this table, to enter the value
1 in the StudyYear field for all records in this table.
3. Make an Append Query based on the table with Year 2 data, to add the
records in this table to the first table, and with the value 2 entered
into the StudyYear field for these records.
4. Repeat step 3 for the Year 3 data.

All of this assumes that the data in these 3 existing tables does not
include information which does not change from one year to the next,
i.e. we are not talking about stuff like name and address of the
participants which I assume is in a separate table. If I am wrong in
this assumption, and you need further help with it, please post back
with more details, maybe with examples, of the fields and data in your
tables.
 
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