Re: (newbie) how to create monthly subforms?

Neither of the approaches you describe seems appropriate. In fact, in one
case, you seem to be implying the date data by which form you are using; in
the other, by which table.

Data, whether it be text, date, numbers, etc., should be _data_. That is,
the date information, should be part of the Record... you can select records
based on the date, or on the year, or the month and year... but the data for
each time period is going to be the same.

A newsgroup article is too limited for even a basic tutorial on relational
database design. Two authors who have written very good books on the
subject are Rebecca Riordan, whose "Designing Effective Database Systems"
has been published in several editions by different publishers. Steve Roman
also has a book that is quite well regarded.

If you structure your data appropriately, you'll start (as you should) from
the tables and/or queries you need, and the forms will "fall into place".

As a personal favor, though, I plead that you do some reading / research on
relational database design and do not follow through on either of the
approaches you have described here. You'll be a lot happier; and we'll be a
lot happier, because we won't have to tell you that you need to start over
(I'm telling you that now, but it's a lot more palatable than if I were
telling you after you had put lots of time and effort into implementing
something that all had to be redone.)

Larry Linson
Microsoft Access MVP


wrote in message
news:304cd6aa-e66a-43ef-a8af-fcb7bc108295@d21g2000prf.google groups.com...
> Hi,
> I'm trying to create a simple data entry database that has yearly /
> monthly forms for which I want 6 different update fields.
>
> I have a tbl_Projects which is the main form. This holds the fields,
> ProjectID (PK) and ProjectName.
>
> I then want to create subforms for 2008, 2009 and 2010 (I have used
> tabs)
>
> Then I want to create subforms for January thru December (again using
> tabs for each month) WITHIN each year
>
> THEN, in each month, I want the 6 different (again tabbed) categories
> for each monthly update, such as subfrm_Achievements,
> subfrm_OtherInfo.
>
> I want these fields linked to the ProjectID in the main form
>
> I want to use this format so that I have a record for each month and
> people don't overwrite previous months entries.
>
> Is there an easy way to do this? I don't want to use tables as I'll
> have to create 3(years)*12(months)*6(categories) i.e. 216 tables. Or
> is this the only way?
>
> Many thanks in advance