Template for Acronyms

[bkelly]

That sounds a bit silly, but people in government must deal with a plethora of acronyms. Often one acronym will have multiple meanings. Multiple projects have their own list of acronyms as do multiple branches within the government and/or any large business. A database could track each acronym and could label it with multiple meanings and associate each meaning with a document or group that created or uses that acronym. A database would enable searches on who originated or “owns” an acronym. Then maybe the user could set a flag to show the acronyms from only a specific group.

 

[Joe4]

You could make this as easy or complex as you like, but here is a simple one-table solution that may work for you.

Set up a table with the following fields:

Autonumber
Acronym
Meaning
Owner
Branch

Then, you can easily create queries that prompt you for a specific Owner or Branch, to return just those. Here is a link on how to create parameter queries: http://www.fontstuff.com/access/acctut01.htm

 

[bkelly]

For each acronym there may be multiple meanings. This can be true on multiple projects within a company, plus different companies. That indicates that one acronym needs multiple fields to show that it is used in N places with N possibly different meanings.

To really make this useful the database would have a utility that can be used to build an acronym list to be added to a document.

From my limited knowledge of normalizing databases this will require not only multiple tables, but code to build documents to put in other documents.
And that is beyond my database expertise. Seems like this is a common need so I am hoping to find a template.

 

[Joe4]

That indicates that one acronym needs multiple fields to show that it is used in N places with N possibly different meanings.

No, that is not how a normalized database would be structured. You should never have similar repeated fields in your table.
If you had multiple fields going across one single record, it would make searching very difficult!
Think about it. If you had 5 different place fields, if you were searching for a certain place, you would need to search for it in 5 different fields!
You would structure it like I showed in my previous post.

So if you have an acronym of "ABC", and you have three different meanings for it (for three different places), then you would simply have three different records in your table for this acronym (note that "branch" or "place" is one of the fields on the table).

To really make this useful the database would have a utility that can be used to build an acronym list to be added to a document.

You could simply create a Report out of the Access database. The Report can be based on a Query, where you can choose which Owner or Branch you want to run it for.

From my limited knowledge of normalizing databases this will require not only multiple tables

Possibly. As of right now, I can only think of a few tables, like an Acronym table, a Branch (Location) table, and possibly an Owner table.

code to build documents to put in other documents.

Creating Reports, which can be exported as PDFs, is fairly basic stuff. However, I am not sure what your requirements are, or where you are trying to insert them. So the complexity of this is unknown without those details. Could be fairly simple, or more complex.

Seems like this is a common need so I am hoping to find a template.

I don't know if I would say this is a "common need" (I have never seen it before). If it is, there should be a template out there for it that can probably locate using a Google Search (start with "Microsoft Access Templates"). If you do not find anything, I would say that it probably isn't as common as you think. However, on the surface, it doesn't appear to be a very complicated request. This is one that a Consultant would probably be able to whip up for you fairly quickly and easily.

 

[bkelly]

Very nice reply. Thank you for taking the time to think about this and to post.
I work for the government and repeatedly see a need for multiple lists of acronyms.
I will continue my search.

 

[Joe4]

You are welcome.

I work for the government and repeatedly see a need for multiple lists of acronyms.

Maybe if you come up with a good one, you can market it and make a few bucks selling it to other government agencies!

 

[jackd]

Do you use https://www.acronymfinder.com/ ? It may save you some time.