All,

Thanks to everyone on this group for your helpful posts. I wanted to
ask you for some advice about a design approach before I go too far
down the wrong path.

I have an existing contact-tracking Access application (A2003), which
uses a tabbed interface with one or more subforms on each tab. Some
subforms further have command buttons which call popup forms loaded
with additional, related subsidiary data.

My intent is to provide some summary data on the tabs or subforms,
giving information about the subsidiary data, such as "contact notes
exist for this person" or "this person has 7 contact notes", etc.

To do so, I know I can use Dlookup functions in unbound controls. I
also figure I can create a variety of individual queries that use
Group-by to return a single result (per key ID), then aggregate those
queries in a master query that could serve as the record source for
another, separate subform (a "dashboard" subform). Of course, there
may be other, better approaches that I'm not aware of.

Do you have advice as to what approach is best, performance being a
key consideration?

Thanks so much for any help, and all your great posts in this group.

Ralph

On 08/10/2010 14:01:58, Ralph wrote:
Just a thought, but I tend to do things the other way round. So for example,
on the main form I would have a field displaying "7 contact notes", Double
click on that field and bring up a form showing those notes.

There is much debate in my office about the two types of approach. I
tend to find myself in the less clicks and windows the better camp,
and some of my colleagues tend to be more in the compartmentalisation
of forms and data camp. So far the mix is around 50/50. The only
tangible benefit that I can say I produce with the approach I use is
that the application is more 'streamlined' from a users perspective as
they have at their fingertips everything they need without needing to
change interface (so to speak). This also only applies on the grounds
that you dont cram so much stuff onto a single form that you need
Google just to find your way around on it!

The Frog