Point me in right direction

[martiniextradry]

I'm an Excel boy who is moving into Access and I'm struggling majorly to see what I should be focusing my time learning, any help would be very much appreciated and would save me hours (many many many of which I have already wasted not getting very far).

I am trying to create a database which will convert the specification sheets of products into sheets that can be used by workers. We cut foam, so mainly they are settee specs, and each one is made up of a number of parts in different sizes and foams etc.

What I am struggling with is getting a whole order collated together into one cutting sheet. ie each customer will order from 5-6 suites each order. I can make a query with which asks you Company? then Product? then ask for the amount of Chairs?, 2seaters? and 3seaters? on order and it calculates from the spec how many of each item it needs with this formula: Qty: [Chairs?]*tblMainTable!QtyPerChair+[2seaters?]*tblMainTable![QtyPer2S/S]+[3seaters?]*tblMainTable![QtyPer3S/S]

But I would need a separate sheet for every single suite ordered, whereas I need it to collaborate them all together to fulfill a customer's whole order on one sheet of paper. And eventually I want to get it to collaborate all customers together and print a separate sheet for each type of foam rather than each customer, but thats perhaps for another day.

So as an example, a customer could order 5 different suites, and each suite has at least 3 different types (usually chair, 2seater and 3seater) on which some parts are universal (ie arm parts), and each will have about 10 different parts to it. Each part in the main table specifies how many are on each type (ie an arm part is generally 2 on each type, a seat would likely be 1 per chair, 2 per 2seater and 3 per 3seater).

So should I be learning about queries, if so which type etc (ie does an append query allow me to do each suite separately and put them together in one table?) or should I be learning about forms and modules?

(Many thanks for reading, I know it rambled a bit but there's a lot you need to know to answer)

 

[Trevor G]

I would look at the Query side first using expressions and multiple tables if you are using them, then consider user forms with command options like combo box to select a customer and a subform to show you specific details, also consider macros and reports, reports would be your printed presentation which can be set to a single order, group orders as well as overall.

Microsoft provides sample database for queries, forms and reports which you can download. Link to sample queries is here, if you google microsoft sample forms then reports you will find the link.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...5B-A8BA-4C2B-BAB7-EEA1F953C040&displaylang=en

Also consider things like YouTube to watch tutorials. There is also a website called datapig which will give you some visual tutorials.

 

[martiniextradry]

Thanks very much Trev.

Is there a particular sort of 'sub-section' of queries I should concentrate on to achieve the multi-parameter based formulas?

Cheers

 

[martiniextradry]

Or is there a way to put the results of a bunch of queries into one mashed up table?

Don't need to know how to do it, just what the method would be called, to focus my currently quote aimless research.

Nice one muckas

 

[Trevor G]

Use your first query to do a make table, then the others append, when you re run the make query will delete the previous table, once done look at creating a macro to run all of the queries and you also want to look at setwarnings in the macro otherwise you will get loads of message boxes asking you to run and what it is running.