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help starting with access please

Hi,

I have an excel spreadsheet which is a list of my drawing numbers.
I have seperate tabs for stuff like mechanical drawings, circuits, and PCB's
and such like.
If my last drawing number was a mechanical drawing it will be say M1234.
If I now want to do a circuit I will choose C1235. The PCB that matches
C1235 will be PCB1235.
I may have an F2345 which is a filmwork drawing, and an E2345 which is an
engraving drawing for the same thing.

These are inherited numbers and though a poor system, it's already in use...

I want to create an Access database from this excel list.

I can deal with manually inputing the data, it's the access database concept
I need help with.

What I want to create is a database where the new record number increments
by one when used, but starts at say 500.
The record number would be the 2345 in F2345 above.

I would then need checkboxes to choose from M, E, F, C, PCB as mentioned
above. Not radio boxes as some of more than one per number could exist.

Then I need another batch of checkboxes to add what categories the drawing
would apply to, which could be many or one. These I want to be searchable
later on, for example, a PCB might appear in the General, Microwave, and CPU
categories, and would need to be a hit if I searched the database for CPU
PCB's.

I need then some text fields for description and notes, again searchable.

An issue or version number field.

A date field that outo inserts the date at time of creation of the record.
I'm using Office 2003, but the database needs to be usable by Office 2000
too.

Can the above be done, and if so, does some kind soul have some pointers or
sites to tell me how?

thanks.

Nov 13 '05 #1
2 1346
incrementing the numeric portion of a string - there's an article on
that here...
http://www.mvps.org/access/strings/str0007.htm

datestamp: create a date/time field and then set the format to general
date and the default value to NOW().

You've outlined most of it. Start building your table(s) and see how
far you get. Then you can just import the Excel records... Sorry, but
there's only one way to learn, and that's to get your hands dirty.
Make friends with the online help or get a good book. SAMS ones are
pretty good...

Nov 13 '05 #2
Oh, and one other thing... figure out all the bits of information you
need to store. From what you've described, all you're storing is info
about drawings. So you can just chuck them all into one table and just
have a flag for the drawing type. I wouldn't go the route of creating
complicated "intelligent" primary keys (where you have tons of
information there). It's easier to put all those bits of info into
separate fields and then use a query to put them together than it is to
take them apart again. But if you really want to understand, you
should try it. Then try to figure out how to get all the documents of
type X when the 3 or 4 or whatever characters in your string that
identify the type of document can be in one of several positions...

Try this. Sit down with a piece of paper (computer NOT recommended),
and just think out what kinds of info you want to store, what bits of
information you want to *search* on (very important), and create a
field name and a type for each of those. then post your results here,
and someone can help you, I'm sure. But you have to take the bull by
the horns and try it first... otherwise, you'll design the whole thing
and still have no idea if it's right or if it really does what you want.

Nov 13 '05 #3

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