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MS Access Forum / Forms / March 2008select multiple items from dropdown
hello everyone, i have a table which is populated using a form. one of the fields is person's name, the dropdown for which picks up data from a second table (which has an index and person's name). what i want to do is modify the form so that a user can select multiple items from the dropdown, but i havent been able fo find a way to do so. i am using access 2003. i know that access 2007 lets you do that, but i dont have an option of upgrading right now. i would appreciate your suggestions thanks, vc-programmer Create a related table, where you can store many options for one record in your existing table (i.e. a one-to-many relation.) This would be the best approach, even if you were using Access 2007. If that's a new concept, here's a couple of introductory examples: http://allenbrowne.com/casu-23.html http://allenbrowne.com/casu-06.html a free tutorial: http://allenbrowne.com/bin/Access_Basics_Crystal_080220_Chapter_03.pdf and some other links: http://www.accessmvp.com/JConrad/accessjunkie/resources.html#DatabaseDesign101  SignatureAllen Browne - Microsoft MVP. Perth, Western Australia Tips for Access users - http://allenbrowne.com/tips.html Reply to group, rather than allenbrowne at mvps dot org. > hello everyone, > [quoted text clipped - 13 lines] > thanks, > vc-programmer A combo box control (aka "drop down") only allows the selection of a single item. A list box allows multiple selections. A combo box is designed to combine the type-a-single-value textbox with some of the preexisting list features of a listbox (hence the name Combo). With the right settings, a combo allows the addition of a new value to the list (similar to a text box) but a list box provides the user with no built in method of adding to the provided list. Afaik, none of this has changed in Access 2007, nor would any change be desirable(IMO). Afaik, if you want/need to allow multiple selections, you have to use a listbox. SignatureHTH, George > hello everyone, > [quoted text clipped - 13 lines] > thanks, > vc-programmer allen: thanks for responding to my query. i am going through your suggestion to make it work, i will send a reply soon. the tutorials are well written, my compliments. george : thanks for suggesting another way of doing it. i seem to be doing something wrong to make it work, i have provided details of what i was trying. - a main table is populated with data using a form. one of the fields to be populated is a person's name, which is pulled from another table by a look-up which has names and serial numbers auto-numbered. - i earlier had a listbox in the form, this allowed me to enter one name. - i now created a combo-box in the form using the wizard. what happens is that i select a name from the drop-down, it gets populated in the combobox. when i select another name, the previous name in the combo-box gets over-written. what am i doing in-correctly here? i want to be able to enter multiple names into the field. i guess i am missing something here... thanks for your input. > A combo box control (aka "drop down") only allows the selection of a single > item. A list box allows multiple selections. [quoted text clipped - 27 lines] > > thanks, > > vc-programmer george, i feel like an idiot for not reading your post carefully. i have been using list-boxes, but i have not been able to select multiple items in a form to populate a filed using that. i tried using combo-boxes, but that dosent work either ( like you mentioned in your post ) for access 2003, is there a way to select multiple items in a list box? > allen: thanks for responding to my query. i am going through your suggestion > to make it work, i will send a reply soon. the tutorials are well written, my [quoted text clipped - 48 lines] > > > thanks, > > > vc-programmer > - i earlier had a listbox in the form, this allowed me to enter one name. Listboxes have a MultiSelect property. If set to Simple or Extended multiple selections are allowed, but the default is None. > when i select another name, the previous name in the combo-box gets > over-written. And this is bad because?? The only time I can imagine you would NOT want a combobox value to NOT overwrite existing data is if you were trying to use one combobox for both data entry and record navigation (which is a lousy idea: use 2), but you haven't even hinted that's what you are trying to do, so I'm confused. Sorry if I'm being dense. If you really do want to make multiple selections, you need a listbox. -- HTH, George > allen: thanks for responding to my query. i am going through your > suggestion [quoted text clipped - 59 lines] >> > thanks, >> > vc-programmer > And this is bad because?? what i want to do it use a dropdown list of names to select multiple names, and then populate this to a field in a database. > > - i earlier had a listbox in the form, this allowed me to enter one name. > Listboxes have a MultiSelect property. If set to Simple or Extended multiple > selections are allowed, but the default is None. i set the multiselect properties to extended. when i select multiple items, and hit enter - the field i linked it to does not get populated . do i need to set something else too? > > - i earlier had a listbox in the form, this allowed me to enter one name. > Listboxes have a MultiSelect property. If set to Simple or Extended multiple [quoted text clipped - 79 lines] > >> > thanks, > >> > vc-programmer >> And this is bad because?? > what i want to do it use a dropdown list of names to select multiple [quoted text clipped - 7 lines] > items, and hit enter - the field i linked it to does not get > populated . do i need to set something else too? Access does not make what you want to do simple because it is a bad idea to do in the first place. A field should hold ONE piece of data. For multiple pieces of similar data you create a new table with a relationship to the first (one to many). If you insist on ignoring this basic premise of database design then you will have to do some work to make it happen. That means using code to grab the values from your multi-select ListBox and doing something with them to get them inserted into your field. Then you have even more difficult work (with more code) to make such a field editable with your form. SignatureRick Brandt, Microsoft Access MVP Email (as appropriate) to... RBrandt at Hunter dot com everyone on this thread : thank you for responding and providing guidance to proceed in the correct direction. and not only that, it was amazing to see super-fast responses as well. i need to start with the basics of relational db, and thats where i will go . thanks, vc-programmer |
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