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First of all, in Access knowledge I know enough to know that on a scale of 1-10 in Access knowledge, I'm probably about a 3, so please keep that in mind for any explanation. When I search for this, I find what seems to think I want to pull information from multiple queries simultaneously to show up on one form.
How can I get several queries to use a single form? For example, I want to be able to look up an item in my computer inventory that shows several pieces of information such as the user, the serial number, the purchase date, the user's location, the Mac Address, and several other pieces of information. I may want to find it by the serial number, by the user, by the PO number it was purchased under, by the tag number we put on it or by a partial serial number. I have a menu with macro buttons for each scenario. I created a query for each one with a fill in value so I can enter the serial number or whatever and then created a form to go with each query. This means if I want to change the form in any way, I have to change all five forms, or copy the updated form four times, rename each one and connect them to the correct query. Can I just create one form, and then somehow direct each query to use that one form to display the data? There's probably a better way to do my queries as well, but I'll save that for another day. Baby steps.
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Each form should have its own, unique record source. You might have a form for users, items, equipment movement, etc. You can add controls on the forms to filter the records displayed in the form. This can be done through applying a filter or adding/editing the criteria of the form's record source.
I suggest you create a new Access ACCDB file using the new Northwind template. These are great to learn best practices and steal/borrow ideas.
Thank you for your answer. So if each form should have its own and unique record source, then what I'm doing does work, and works wonderfully - except if I decide I need to make a change to the form. I can look into filtering more extensively, as I primarily use it to filter out records that do or don't match. For some items, such as a serial number where there is only one record that will match, filtering seems a poor choice, but I may be missing something. I was somehow under the (apparently mistaken) impression that those really good with Access didn't create multiple identical forms to view data.
As Duane mentioned, you would typically base a form to a single data source, but you can certainly display information from multiple sources on one form. For example, you can use subforms to display related data. Can you show us your table relationship window and let us know which tables you want to display on your form? We need to see how the information from each query is related to one another.
I have used subforms before, and they work well when needed, but that really won't work here. There is only one source. There are three tables, one with the inventory and two that are just pick lists for the forms. The queries are not related to each other in any way, other than they query the same table. The inventory table has about 15 fields and 500 records, and I want to find a specific record in that table in a variety of ways--either by name, serial number, PO number, etc. Once I find it, regardless of how I find it, it needs to display all 15 fields. There is no one to one or one to many relationship since there is only one table, so a subform would not be useful in this case. I just was trying to avoid having to update 5 forms anytime that I wanted a change to the form.
I can’t see any reason to duplicate forms. You can add a combobox to a form header using the wizard that will find a matching record.
