Forms - Tabbed versus subpages question

Good Morning everyone,

Just some quick clarifying questions r/t the differences between tabs and subforms.

We have a form that is pretty similar to a typical address book contact form. Most of the information on the form [frmPerson] is pulled from a cooresponding table [tblPerson]. However, some of the information for text boxes needs to be pulled from other tables [tblProfessional], [tblAgencyContacts], etc. and is dependent on the type of contact [tblDisciplineID].

We initially set up the form to use tabs to represent the different types of contacts. We are currently working within the tab Professional that uses a list box to allow the user to select the agency they want to lookup for there current contact. For example if I work for Company ABC and Company XYZ they both show up in the list box. The user then selects Company ABC, and the corresponding text boxes for that person and company should populate. The problem that we are seeing is that, it doesn't appear there is an easy way to associate the text boxes that are to be populated with a table different than the one the [frmPeron] is associated with [tblPerson]. So here are the questions...

1. Can tabs be used (easily) to lookup the information in a different table (i.e. [tblProfessional]) and populate text fields? I realize we could use combo boxes, but this seems like messy programming.

2. Should we use subforms instead of tabs? Obviously, subform will link directly to a different table. My only initial consideration here is trying to minimize the number of forms we have. I assume we could get the subform to change using a case statement that is dependendent on the [DisciplineID].

Many Thanks!

There are a couple of things you can do. You can have subforms on your tabbed form as long as there is a link. In this case it would be a combination of the PersonID and the CompanyID OR the unique identifier from the table that is storing which companies a person works for.

Alternately you can use unbound frames. It's a little more work intensive and if you're not fairly familiar with working with recordsets in VBA. Personally I prefer unbound data entry but either method is equally acceptable.

Great the first idea makes sense to me and will try to work with it in a bit.

Can you give a bit more detail about your preference for the unbound frames and perhaps a piece of sample code that might be similar. I typically understand the basic logic but don't code day-to-day so the syntax helps.

rpeare, I greatly appreciate your (and everyone elses) help and the time you spend in here!!