User-friendly searching

Hi, I'm currently working on putting together a database of the
research going on in my hospital department. The ultimate goal is to
provide a way for new doctors to see what kind of research is
currently going on or has happened in the past. Fields include title,
names of people involved, dates of research, publications, whether
there is a database, study design, number of subjects, and keywords. I
want people to be able to search on whatever field they want, so I
don't think a parameter query would be the best way to go. And
unfortunately, the vast majority of my department has absolutely no
Access experience, so I think trying to get them to use filters would
also not be the best idea. Does anyone have a good suggestion of how
to go about doing this? Thanks so much for the assistance!

Hi,

you can build a seperate search screen that builds up a SQL string to filter
the main form. You'll need some VBA to achieve this.

kind regards
NG

"laura.dodge" wrote:

Hi, I'm currently working on putting together a database of the
research going on in my hospital department. The ultimate goal is to
provide a way for new doctors to see what kind of research is
currently going on or has happened in the past. Fields include title,
names of people involved, dates of research, publications, whether
there is a database, study design, number of subjects, and keywords. I
want people to be able to search on whatever field they want, so I
don't think a parameter query would be the best way to go. And
unfortunately, the vast majority of my department has absolutely no
Access experience, so I think trying to get them to use filters would
also not be the best idea. Does anyone have a good suggestion of how
to go about doing this? Thanks so much for the assistance!
.

On Tue, 27 Oct 2009 07:38:26 -0700 (PDT), "laura.dodge"
wrote:

Hi, I'm currently working on putting together a database of the
research going on in my hospital department. The ultimate goal is to
provide a way for new doctors to see what kind of research is
currently going on or has happened in the past. Fields include title,
names of people involved, dates of research, publications, whether
there is a database, study design, number of subjects, and keywords. I
want people to be able to search on whatever field they want, so I
don't think a parameter query would be the best way to go. And
unfortunately, the vast majority of my department has absolutely no
Access experience, so I think trying to get them to use filters would
also not be the best idea. Does anyone have a good suggestion of how
to go about doing this? Thanks so much for the assistance!

A "Filter by Form" would seem suited for this. There's a builtin filter by
form feature in Access, or you can Bing or Google for the term; it's a very
frequent discussion.
--

John W. Vinson [MVP]

In Access2007 I sometimes use just a simple "quick search" field coupled
with the built-in filtering available for every column in the datasheet
(that little arrow on each column). The quick search allows the user to
just enter text and then it searches across whatever fields are common to
search on (requires a little code for this).
For example: if they enter "smith" if might find titles with the name
"smith" or people with the name "smith". However they can always filter on
any column specifically by using the little arrow.

I think it's a good compromise between being too simple and too complex to
use, however datasheet filtering is different in earlier versions of Access.

My two cents,
The other suggestions are all good as well,
Mark
RPT Software
http://www.rptsoftware.com

PS: Contact me via the website if you want an example.

"laura.dodge" wrote in message
...
Hi, I'm currently working on putting together a database of the
research going on in my hospital department. The ultimate goal is to
provide a way for new doctors to see what kind of research is
currently going on or has happened in the past. Fields include title,
names of people involved, dates of research, publications, whether
there is a database, study design, number of subjects, and keywords. I
want people to be able to search on whatever field they want, so I
don't think a parameter query would be the best way to go. And
unfortunately, the vast majority of my department has absolutely no
Access experience, so I think trying to get them to use filters would
also not be the best idea. Does anyone have a good suggestion of how
to go about doing this? Thanks so much for the assistance!

It appears that you planned to allow people with no experience to use your
database as end-users, if you had any thought of using parameter queries
(useful only for an end-user who knows what he/she is doing, working on
their own data). You need to develop an application, with forms so the
users can enter search terms, then create the SQL for a query based on the
users' entry in the form... use the SQL as RowSource for a Form or a Report
(in Preview) for the users to view. The application should not allow the
users access to the tables or to build queries on their own, because there
is too much opportunity for inadvertent error that can result in data loss
or modification.

BTW, what version of Access are you using?

Larry Linson
Microsoft Office Access MVP


"laura.dodge" wrote in message
...
Hi, I'm currently working on putting together a database of the
research going on in my hospital department. The ultimate goal is to
provide a way for new doctors to see what kind of research is
currently going on or has happened in the past. Fields include title,
names of people involved, dates of research, publications, whether
there is a database, study design, number of subjects, and keywords. I
want people to be able to search on whatever field they want, so I
don't think a parameter query would be the best way to go. And
unfortunately, the vast majority of my department has absolutely no
Access experience, so I think trying to get them to use filters would
also not be the best idea. Does anyone have a good suggestion of how
to go about doing this? Thanks so much for the assistance!