Access Reports HELP!

[nursejames]

Ok - I took a database wherein the main table had actual text data rather than indexed fields (ie: activity name, rather than an activity ID number referencing the actual activity name from the activity table). Soooo....now my main table has ID numbers representing the actual data from other tables. NOW - when building reports: the reports show only the numeric data from the main table rather than the actual text data from the other tables (ie: the activity ID rather than the actual activity name, client ID rather than the actual client name, etc). I understand that I can build queries that take the numbers in the main table and reference them back to their respective tables (usually with INNER JOINS), but this seems inefficient to me. Is there any other way?? is this the only way, the best way?? Thanks for any advice!!

[Killer42]

Ok - I took a database wherein the main table had actual text data rather than indexed fields (ie: activity name, rather than an activity ID number referencing the actual activity name from the activity table). Soooo....now my main table has ID numbers representing the actual data from other tables. NOW - when building reports: the reports show only the numeric data from the main table rather than the actual text data from the other tables (ie: the activity ID rather than the actual activity name, client ID rather than the actual client name, etc). I understand that I can build queries that take the numbers in the main table and reference them back to their respective tables (usually with INNER JOINS), but this seems inefficient to me. Is there any other way?? is this the only way, the best way?? Thanks for any advice!!

I suppose it depends on how you define efficiency. Coding fields in this way will probably save quite a bit of storage, but may of course slow things down. However, I think that if done right, it can actually improve performance by reducing the amount of data being thrown around.

Personally, I've had cases where I had to do this, because my data went over the 2GB limit. I'm now looking into splitting up the data and using a fornt-end with a UNION query to access it in multiple databases, though other suggestions are always welcome, of course.

[MMcCarthy]

replace the textboxes on the forms with combo boxes bound to the same control. This should work.

You could actually try deleting the textbox first and redraging it from the Field List. If you set up the ID fields in the tables with lookup facilities this will work.