Question

I have an ancient Access application that I’ve recently moved the data to a SQL backend using the SQL Server Migration Assistant, and almost everything is working except for one issue.

In the application, we have a form with another form inside of it. The outside form finds specific “issues” entered into the system, and then looks for a history record(the inside form) that is associated with this issue. If a history record is present, it works perfectly, as the record shows up in the embedded form just fine. However, if there is no history record yet present in the database, the entire details sections of the embedded form blank out entirely. The properties are all set exactly the same as when it was a pure Access Database, but now that I’ve switched it to pull from SQL using Linked Tables, the form is now blank when I don’t have a record to pull from.

EDIT: I learned that there are two conditions that when both met will cause a form’s details pane to go blank: (1) there are no existing records to be displayed, and (2) it is not possible to add a new record.

This means that the second condition is where my issue lies. I tried scrolling to the bottom of each of the linked tables in Access, and for the History records table, I was not able to add any new rows, but for the Issues table, I was. Something is keeping me from being able to edit this one table for some reason.

Answer 1

I think the behavior you described may happen when the record source of the subform (your “inner form”) is read-only. When matching rows exist, they are displayed. But, when no matching rows exist, you can’t add a row so the subform’s bound data controls are disabled.

Open the subform in Design View. Select the form and open its property sheet (Alt+Enter). Find the Record Source property on the Data tab of the property sheet. If the property value is a SELECT statement, copy it and past into SQL View of a new Access query then switch the query to Datasheet View. If the property is the name of a table or saved query, open that object directly in Datasheet View.

Once you have the form’s record source opened in Datasheet View, are you able to add a row? If not, make sure the SQL Server user has INSERT permission for the data source. However, even with INSERT privilege, Access may have linked the data source as read-only if it was unable to identify a field or combination of fields which uniquely identify each row. If that is the case, you may need to re-link the table and tell Access which field(s) to use as the primary key.