Im a novice and need help with making a form

[sheila]

Hi,

Access is foriegn to me but I am trying to use it for a personal
'records' file.

I have a music collection and list it in a table with the following
fields:

Artist
Album
Track
Circa

Easy enough I guess to do this but i want a FORM that gives me album
names and artists name only with one entry per album. Only problem is
that some albums have multiple artists name and when this is the case
I want it to list the artist as "Various Artists".

Can this be done?? If so, how?

I have something like 800 albums listed in my collection so its not
exactly a small collection.

TIA for any assistance.

Sheila

 

[Douglas J. Steele]

Do you have an Album table as well? It's probably appropriate in this case.

 

[sheila]

No, all I have is just the one table with all the info in it. I do
however have a subform "albums" that I use to show other tracks on
each album.

no use huh? So can you tell me what i need to do?

sheila

 

[sheila]

hmmm, so you ask a question then IGNORE the thread, ok, I wont ask for
help again.

sheila

 

[John Vinson]

hmmm, so you ask a question then IGNORE the thread, ok, I wont ask for
help again.

I'll see to it that your fee is promptly refunded.

Douglas, like the rest of us, is an unpaid volunteer donating time
from his other work to post answers here. It would seem he had other
demands on his time and was unable to reply promptly. I'm sorry about
that, but that can happen in a peer-support group like this.

The trouble I see with your initial question is that even a single
TRACK might have multiple artists, not to mention an entire album.
This "all artists" string could get complicated to construct!

You certainly should have a table of Albums. You can construct it
using an Append query from your existing single table; select only the
album-specific fields and set the query's Unique Values property to
True. You can then have a Form based on Albums, with a subform based
on the tracks table (which would be your current table minus all
album-specific fields other than the unique AlbumID).

I'd suggest, rather than having an Artist field in the Albums table,
that you have two additional tables: Artists, with one record for each
artist (or, if you prefer, for each band or performing group), and a
TrackArtists table resolving the many to many relationship between
artists and performances. After all, there are multiple Beatles
albums, and even more New York Philharmonic albums! If a given track
involves only one artist, you would have the unique TrackID and the
unique ArtistID; if a track involves (say) a trio of singers, you'ld
have three records, with the TrackID in each, but a different artist
ID in each. You could display all of the artists in a Subform, either
on the track subform or as a subform on the Album subform itself.

John W. Vinson[MVP]

 

[sheila]

doesnt matter, because of the lack of help as i mentioned, i have
taken othedr steps to get what i wanted.

yeah and boo hoo about Douglas' time, i feel for him!!!!

i shall remain an ms access novice,,,