If you are using an invoice system in your Access database, you might want to show customers with the related sales. You can achieve this by using a main form and a sub form. A form within a form is called a sub form.
Let’s say there are two tables – Customer and Sales. You can create a form based on the table Customer. Select Forms in the main database window and click New, then Form Wizard and the form “Customer”. You can select the following from the available fields: Customer ID, FirstName, LastName, Address1, Address2, and Tel. Then click “Next” to go to the next screen. As a layout you should choose “Columnar” and then click “Next” again. You can select Standard for your style and click “Next”. Now it is time to name the form “Customers” and click “Finish”. You have created the form “Customers” in Access.
If you want to show sales for the customer you have to create another form which is going to be a sub form. And again you are going to use the Wizard for this. You can repeat the above steps but make sure to choose the table “Sales” for this. Fields to select are OrderID, CustomerID, OrderNumber, OrderDate, ProductNumber, and Price. Then click “Next”. As the layout for this form will be “Datasheet” and the style – “Standard”. Name your form “Sales” and click “Finish” which will create form as a datasheet. It will resemble the Excel spreadsheet. You can close the form now and go back to the database window and then open the form “Customers” in the design view. Make some room by expanding the form edges. Then go back to the database window, leaving the form in design view.
Select form “Sales” and drag it to the empty area in the “Customers” form. You can stretch the form as you like and give it the desirable position. Then you can run it. Now go to the menu option “View” and select “Form View”. Now your forms related. If you go to the Properties of the forms you would see notes like Link Child Fields and Link Master Fields. Access made the link when the sub form was created because fields had the same names in the both tables. Now you can change the color of your forms and add other features to them.
As you can see, it is a very powerful feature of Access to create sub main forms. You can use them for showing a single record and related multiple records. With feature it is easy to model a lot of relationship. One of the customers can have more than one sale, for example. With the above steps you will be able to make the performance of your Access database a little more effective.
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