Question

I am making a rather simple inventory tracking database. And I want to retrieve the record by ID, and add or remove the specified number to the amount. If it doesn’t exist I want to add it. Is it even possible to do this without binding to a table?

Answer 1

Sounds like you have a candidate ID value. Maybe it’s contained in a numeric variable named MyID. And you have another numeric value, MyAmtChange, which is to be added to the value in a field named amount in your table for the row where the ID field value matches MyID.

A complication is there may be no row in your table whose ID value matches MyID. In that case, you need to add a row for it.

If that’s correct, INSERT a row for MyID when one doesn’t exist. Then you can simply UPDATE the amount in the row which matches MyID.

Dim strInsert As String
Dim strUpdate As String
Dim db As DAO.Database

Set db = CurrentDb
If DCount("*", "YourTableNameHere", "ID = " & MyID) = 0 Then
    strInsert = "INSERT INTO YourTableNameHere (ID)" & vbCrLf & _
        "VALUES (" & MyID & ");"
    Debug.Print strInsert
    db.Execute strInsert, dbFailOnError
End If

strUpdate = "UPDATE YourTableNameHere" & vbCrLf & _
    "SET amount = Nz(amount, 0) + " & MyAmtChange & vbCrLf & _
    "WHERE ID = " & MyID & ";"
Debug.Print strUpdate
db.Execute strUpdate, dbFailOnError
Set db = Nothing

If this guess is reasonably close, add an error handler block to that code to deal with any issues surfaced by dbFailOnError … or any other errors.