It sounds like you are describing trying to use the "lookup field" data type
in an Access table. If so, then you are re-discovering reasons why this is
not a good idea.

For one thing, as you point out, it's hard to spot the relationships.

For another, the field in the table displays the looked-up value, but it is
actually storing the key value.

For yet another, working directly in the table like this is a mistake. If
you only had a spreadsheet, you'd use it ... but Access only stores data in
tables. You use Access forms to add/edit data because forms provide much
more control.

More info, please...

Regards

Jeff Boyce
Microsoft Access MVP

--
Disclaimer: This author may have received products and services mentioned
in this post. Mention and/or description of a product or service herein
does not constitute endorsement thereof.

Any code or pseudocode included in this post is offered "as is", with no
guarantee as to suitability.

You can thank the FTC of the USA for making this disclaimer
possible/necessary.

"jrav" wrote in message
...
I am having trouble understanding a design concept. I am setting up an
employee database for the first time. At issue is how to handle the
actions
entered into a log table. I have a table for employee's info, and log
table
that i am using to keep track of actions performed on employees, i.e. new
hire, raise, termination, etc. It seems appropriate to have the log table
include a FK for an actions table with all of the possible actions.

in the design view of the log table, i can see that the action field is
set
as a combo box with a row source of the actions table PK, yet I don't see
a
relationship in the relationships view. Is this a problem? I tried
dragging
the field over to establish the relationship, but the field properties
don't
match. (log table = text) Changing the data type to number wants to delete
all of the entries. So it seems like I should do an update query to change
the text to the code of the FK from the actions table to create the
relationship.

Bottom line, why is there no relationship, and does it matter long term?

thanks in advance.