how to copy an existing form info....

Hi There, Merry Christmas.

I am working on a loan application form. This form has almost 200 fields. When the customer comes for the second loan instead of retyping all the fields, i would like to copy the earlier information and display it in form with an auto-increment id number.

Also, we have many branches that plan to use this form in different branches. Right now we have it in shared drive that makes the system slow. I read in previous forum (Difference between access and sql server) in which Iwells has discussed about the sql server being used to store the tables and use forms and reports as a front end. For this do we have to know sql or I can know access and store the info on sql server.

Thank you

Rishy

First you need to normalize your data. Seperate the data that pertains to the applicate and the data for a loan. For example the persons name would fall in the applicates table while the loan number would fall in the loans table. Use the applicates Id to tie the two tables together. The relationship would be one to many, one applicate many loans. You can use the auto increment id number for both tables to keep it unic. Any basic access book will describe the normalization process in detail.

As for the upgrade you can use access as the front end and SQL Server as the backend. By upgrading you will reduce the load on your network because the server only passes the data requested not the whole database to your machine when you make a request speeding up the interaction between the server and the client. Also you can have more concurrent users then access which slows after 5 users are on at the same time. The upgrade will require some understanding of sql because SQL Server only speaks this language. There is a upgrade wizard that will help and may convert all your queries to sql for you. Do all your development on a copy of the program so if you make a mistake you do not corupt your data. It will require some study on your part but you should be able to accomplish the task. I hope this helps.

Thank you very much that helps.