Various

[kop442000]

Hi Guys,

I have recently been bluffing my way through creating a basic Access "contacts" database.

Just a couple of things I am not sure how to do:

I have a form that shows each contact and details on its own on a page, and you can go forwards or backwards through the records.

(1)I want it to sort alphabetically by "Company Name", which I know how to do, but I want the records with "Company Name" blank to come AFTER "Z" and not BEFORE "A".

(2)Also, after it has sorted this way, I want the next criteria to be the "Surname" field. For example, if 2 or more records have the same "Company Name" field, it should then sort alphabetically by "Surname".

(3)When I skip to a new record, there is no cursor, until I click the mouse in a field. Any way I can make it automatically appear in the first field?

(4)I want to make it so that a record cannot be duplicated only if "First Name", "Surname", and "Company Name" are ALL identical to an already existing record? Is this possible?

Thanks in advance for any help on any of the above queries!

Kop442000

 

[SydneyGeek]

A couple of questions -- how it the database structured?
Are all of the records in a single table (like Excel), or have you separated out Company from Contact information? If it's all one table, I'd recommend that you check out the sample Contacts database that ships with Access (if you haven't already). Just create a new database from a template, select the Contact Management template, and let it go.
The advantage of separating out the data into logical chunks -- Normalising -- is that data entry, maintenance and reporting are all much simpler.
If you are already there, forgive me for butting in. If not, check out this link -- http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;234208 It's a downloadable document that decsribes the process sof coming up with the Northwind database structure. This link is for Access 2000 but there are links there for the other versions as well.

Denis