Question

The online documentation for MS Office 2010 implies the Field List Pane can be used during table design, but I am unable to reproduce the bahavior described in the online documentation.

What I was trying to do is, given 2 tables: Employee and EmployeeType, add a reference from Employee to EmployeeType via drag and drop.

The documentation indicates you can somehow drag the EmployeeType.TypeName column into the Employee table, and that will create the new column and define a new relationship between the two tables.

I am not seeing that behavior.

The documentation also states that you should be able to bring up the Field List Pane (Alt+F8) while in the datasheet view of another table, and [add a field from another table + create a relationship] via drag and drop.

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/access-help/create-edit-or-delete-a-relationship-HA010341606.aspx#_Toc269467496

Add a field and create a relationship from the Field List pane

With the table open in Datasheet view, press ALT+F8. The Field List pane appears.
Under Fields available in other tables, click the plus sign (+) next to a table name to display the list of fields in that table.
Drag the field that you want from the Field List pane to the table that is open in Datasheet view.
When the insertion line appears, drop the field into position.

The Lookup Wizard starts.

Follow the instructions to complete the Lookup Wizard.

The field appears in the table in Datasheet view.

When you drag a field from an “other” (unrelated) table and then
complete the Lookup Wizard, a new one-to-many relationship is
automatically created between the table in the Field List and the
table to which you dragged the field. This relationship, created by
Access, does not enforce referential integrity by default. To enforce
referential integrity, you must edit the relationship.

I am not seeing that behavior. When I bring up the Field List Wondow, it shows: No fields available to be added to the current view.

Should this actually work? Do I possibly have a bad install?

Edit

Moderators, please don’t close this question, as there are several instances on the internet of people having this exact problem, with no followup on the issue. This seems to be a rare and unacknowledged bug in Access 2010 so there is value in having it documented here.

Answer 1

Yes, using the Field List Pane when in Datasheet View for a table should be possible, it should display a list of other tables/columns in the existing database, and you should be able to drag a column from another table and drop it into the desired position in the table in datasheet view, which will:

1. Create that new column
2. Define a new database relationship between the two tables (but you may have to manually edit that relationship afterwards, as all relationship options are not available to you during this process.
3. Create a combo box as the Lookup Display Control, using the source table/column as the RowSource (whether this is desirable is highly questionable as per the comments others have pointed out on the original question, or summarized here: http://access.mvps.org/access/lookupfields.htm)

I still do not know why it was unavailable to me, after screwing around trying different things, it suddenly starting working (and I couldn’t reproduce it not working, trying the exact same things I was doing before).