Boy, this week was tough!
First I couldn't figure out whether to set up the fields before I entered data or after. When I set up the fields before I entered data it didn't work as well.
Then, I couldn't get my indexed field to work right. If I edit the indexed field and then close it shouldn't the existing data be sorted by the index field? It doesn't seem to work for data I enter after I create the indexed field either. Isn't an "index" a criteria by which one sorts a table? What is "an invisible data structure that stores the sort order of a table based on the indexed field"? Why not just sort the table by the field using the pull down command, i.e. sort A to Z?
Also, I can create a memo text with rich text for one record but not for all records within a field. How do you set up a rich text format that applies to all records?
The easiest fields to create for me were dates, numbers and the total calculation record (row), probably because I deal with numbers all the time and find them less intimidating. I'm hoping we'll learn how to create fields that make calculations based on existing values in a table. I'm also hoping to learn how to use a look-up function to return values in a table based on other values in the table (like the Excel Vlook-up function).
I'd like to attach my actual database here but I'm not sure how to do that. Would a screenshot do?
3 comments:
Hey Kerry, can you just e-mail me that maintenance database you used up at Prudhoe? I'll make a few changes - add a couple of switchboards, convert it to Access 2007 and Voila! I'm done for the term!! (Just kidding Sage.)
Yeah, I found that some of the fields worked out better if the information had been typed prior to setting the field type (the field with default value gave me the most grief). About the rich text - I couldn't figure out how to do more than one record at a time either.
Kerry, and indexed field is a bit of a misnomer because it doesn't 'sort' the data it just keeps an index of that particular field in memory so that when your database gets large it takes less processing time to search that field.
What you want is to save stored sorts and filters which we'll get into in the next chapter of the book.
Unfortunately it's currently not possible (that i know of) to set rich text on multiple fields at a time.
@Mike: Lol. That's fine Mike, just make sure you do it in addition to your own project!
I actually found out that it is much better to first create the fields, define their type and then enter data. Once, I first entered the data and then tried to change the field type to Number which caused a lot of grief to me as I had already entered some text in several rows. That made me learn to first define the types and then enter data.
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