Other methods besides subforms

[Montez659]

As my db grows and the powers that be continue to want more functionality, I find that subforms seem to be taking over my main form due to the junction tables associated with the data.

What are some other ways to handle the input of data besides just continuing to add subforms (which can be bigger than space seems to allow and can look quite sloppy at times)? Any ideas are appreciated, thanks!

 

[boblarson]

I typically use a combination of subforms, tab controls, and subforms on tab controls and even tab controls on tab controls (although you have to use a form/subform to add to another tab control) to organize things into a clean, concise format. Depending on the data you can use popup forms to fill out or edit things as well.

 

[Norie]

How many subforms are we talking about here?

Are you sure they all need to be on the main form?

Couldn't you have buttons that open up other forms, perhaps modally, to view/input data?

You could open these so that the main form is still viewable so the user can refer back to it.

Another approach would again involve multiple forms, each one being a kind of 'main' form.

These would open on their own, ie the form they are opened from is closed, allowing the user to view/input etc data.

Each of these forms would have a back button that simply closes the form and returns to the previous form.

 

[boblarson]

One thing I neglected to mention - is if you use tabs and subforms then you can help the speed of things by not assigning the subform's record source until that tab is selected that it is on. You can then remove it when moving away. For a demo on how you can set the record source at runtime when the tab is selected, see this example here on my website:
http://downloads.btabdevelopment.com/Samples/subforms/Sample-Dynamic_Tab_Loading.zip

I should probably modify the sample so it removes the record source when moving from the tab as well.

 

[Montez659]

Thanks for the suggestions! I will be looking into them all.