Question

The problem

I’ve currently been altering my MS Access database to be centred around Client ID rather than Client Name. However all my forms are still based on Client Name. I need to change this to be based on Client ID, but I want it to still appear as just Client Name to the users.

The structure

Before I go any further, I should explain the two relevant tables:

ClientTable:

– ClientID (PK)

– ClientName (indexed, no duplicates)

EntityTable:

– EntityName (CK, no duplicates)

– ClientID (CK, duplicates allowed)

– ClientName (a remnant of my past structure, I figure I won’t need this once I’ve sorted this issue out)

Key relationship: One Client has many Entities

There’s also good reason for my composite key (CK) but I won’t go into explaining that – my whole structure is far more complicated than shown above.

The form

So back to the form. Currently I have an ‘Entity’ form, which includes an EntityName text box and a ClientName dropdown box.

What I want to happen is that the Client Name dropdown box is visually and functionally the same for the user (i.e. when making a new entity, the user selects a client name), but what needs to happen is that it’s actually selecting the Client ID and associating it to that record.

I figure this is a fairly common problem but haven’t found an solution in my browsing. Any ideas?

Answer 1

This can simply be solved by changing the Row Source to:

SELECT ClientID, ClientName & SomeIdentifierForDups FROM ClientTable

Changing …

Control source : ClientID  
Column count   : 2
Column widths  : 0; 2

Where ClientID referes to the bound table for the form.