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Re: Something Cool To Stumble Upon...

By: Zimbler0 in 6TH POPE | Recommend this post (0)
Wed, 11 May 22 4:30 AM | 21 view(s)
Boardmark this board | 6th Edition Pope Board 		Msg. 31892 of 60008
(This msg. is a reply to 31863 by Decomposed)
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Access can be a whole lot of fun . . . and a whole lot of work. But it makes for a very useful tool when done right.

The ability to search through the entire database to see if one has a particular thing - and have it tell you that it has it, how many one has, and where to get it. Priceless.

I have a 'portfolio database' in Access where, once a week, I punch in the share prices I am interested in. And I thought 'wouldn't it be nice if I could see the last few weeks share prices while I'm doing this?'. So I wound up creating a sub form. When I'm punching in share prices, I call up the form. Punch in the stock ticker and hit enter. The cursor goes down to the price field and the subform feeds the ticker to a query which calls up the prices for that stock (or mutual fund or whatever) and it displays the dates and share prices on the subform. About four weeks worth, with a scroll bar so I can scroll back in time. (Sorted by date - newest at the top, oldest at the bottom.)

Punch in the share price, hit enter and the cursor goes to a date block with the current date already in it. Hit enter again, the current date goes into the database with the ticker and price and the form goes back up to 'Ticker' again. Repeat till all my data has been entered.

And there are reports where data can be graphed as well. Graphs can be displayed on forms, or graphs can be put into reports and printed.

Cool stuff.

Zim.




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The above is a reply to the following message:
Re: Something Cool To Stumble Upon...
By: Decomposed in 6TH POPE
Tue, 10 May 22 5:18 AM 		Msg. 31863 of 60008

Zimbler0:

Re: “Can I assume that when one types in a Title, that the database checks to see if it has already been entered?”Hey, I'm a beginner. You probably know Access far better than I do. I have fields where duplicates aren't allowed, but I don't have informative windows popping up to tell me whenever I've duplicated a title. I'm not sure I'd want that anyway. It might get annoying - because duplicate titles ARE permitted in this database.
Re: “'Originator' - I assume is the same as author?”An author... when the Media type is a book, a band when the Media type is a CD, a Director when the Media type is a DVD. Sometimes there is no author. Better Homes & Gardens has a bunch of gardening books with no author. So the Originator is the Publisher.

I mulled this over quite a bit before I settled on "Originator." That works for all the types of media this database can and will track. Even photos. Not everything has an author, but everything does have an originator.Re: “'Location' reminds me of when I used to keep the shop inventory of spare parts - on a computer. Access database, and the location was a text field. And it was usually something like 'A-27-C'. Where the first character (A) was a cabinet number. The second number was either a drawer number, or a shelf space. And the third character (C) was the space inside the drawer.”I've got boxes that were packed in Sacramento, at the 1st house in Virginia, at the 2nd house in Virginia, at the 3rd house in Virginia, at the condo we were in during our last year in Virginia, at the Charlottesville condo where my son lived, and at the current NH house. The box codes all mean something to me, as does your shop inventory. But their main purpose was and is just to give me unique box numbers each time I moved. I've got a spreadsheet with a detailed inventory of most boxes. But not books. There were just too many.Re: “Can you add new authors on the fly? Have you looked at subforms yet? (This would be a form, with another form on the form.)”Naw. As I suspected, you know Access better than I do. When I open a box, I pull out its books and make one pass through them just to enter all the authors my DB doesn't yet have. It doesn't take too long but would certainly improve if I could add them "on the fly' while typing in the books. The database can't do that yet. Nor does it have subforms. But it does have dropdown boxes derived from other tables. For instance, when entering a book's genre, the database only allows genres to be entered that are already in tblGenres. That way there are no mistakes and I don't just invent new genres on the fly, sometimes calling something a 'Murder movie' and other times a 'Horror movie' and still others a 'Suspense Thriller.' Everything along those lines gets classed as a "Suspense/Thriller." Every now and then I have to add a new genre to the table, but it's not common.

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