Microsoft Access Forms: Page 2
By: Dan D'Urso
Published: October 2002
One-to-many Forms
These are sometimes called
master-detail forms. The basic idea
is that one table is the parent or
master table. The other is the
child or detail. The parent is the
record source for a main form in
which a subform is embedded with
the child table as the record
source. There are several ways to
create one-to-many forms. First
let's have a look at what one looks
like. It's a simple example showing
a work order with labor tickets
applied.
The main form uses the work_orders
table as the record source. The
subform uses the labor table. There
is a foreign key, wono, in the
labor table which refers to the
primary key, wono, in the
work_orders table. Here is what the
relationship look like.
We'll create this the manual way.
Once we know what is going on we'll
look at how to speed the process up
with the Form Wizard.
There are three basic steps.
Create the subform
Create the main form
Add the subform to the main form
1. Create the subform
Use the From Wizard to create a
form just as for a simple data
entry form. But select a tabular or
dataheet format. Remove extraneous
controls, labels, etc. Use the
child table as the record source.
When done you should have something
that looks like the one below (I
did mine in tabular format).
Save it. The convention for subform
name prefixes is sfrm. Some people
use frmsub.
2. Create the Main Form
Create the main, or master, form
using a columnar format and the
parent table as the record source.
3. Add the Subform to the Main
Form
Drag and drop the subform on the
the main form. Voila. You now have
a master-detail form.
On the next page we'll take a look
at the property sheet.
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