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HELP! I can't keep track family address, phones, dates, etc.



 
 
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  #11  
Old January 27th, 2005, 11:23 PM
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THANKS! Now I may start this project as time permits or find some high
school kid that will probably get it done in an hour or two and I'll pay
them!!

"John Vinson" wrote:

On Wed, 26 Jan 2005 16:11:07 -0800, "
wrote:

I want to creat an Access Data base that would start with my parent(s) page
with their page having a drop down list of their children (me and 6 others)
linking to an individual child page of our info, further linking to pages for
our spouse, children and so on for a couple of generations. Each individuals
pages would have fields for name, spouse, addresses (home, company name/work,
vacation home) phone numbers (home, work, fax, cell, other) Date of birth
(with current age calculation automatically inserted) Date of Death, date of
marriage, e-mail addresses, etc. Reports would be an address book,
alphabetical lookup by first or last names, selected mailing labels, etc. It
would be neat to have the cover page have areas (button) for Mom/Dad photo,
each child, by clicking the photo you go to that persons main info page with
spouse and child links from drop down lists.....


I hope Graeme will forgive me for jumping in here. His advice is (as
usual) right on the mark but I see you're having difficulty with the
jargon.

In Access, you need to design your database starting with the Tables.
You need to identify the "Entities" - real-life people, things, or
events - of importance to your application; each kind of Entity gets
its own Table. You then need to figure out the relationships between
the entities - which, in the case of geneology, can be surprisingly
complicated (step-parents, just for example: not only can one person
have several children, one child might - like me - have two mothers as
well as a father).

Don't jump into designing your data entry forms or your reports too
soon! The first thing to do is to set up Tables to store the
information you want. These constitute the foundation of your
building; the forms and reports are the superstructure and come later.

I'd start with a People table:

People
PersonID Autonumber, a unique identifier for a given person
BirthLastName
BirthFirstName
CurrentLastName married name, or for name changes
CurrentFirstName some people change their name of course
Nickname
DateOfBirth [Date/Time] note that you can't use approximate dates
DateOfDeath

Addresses
AddressID autonumber
Address1
Address2
City
StateProvince
PostCode don't use Zip, you might have relatives in Canada or
Zimbabwe

PeopleAddresses
PersonID
AddressID
MailingAddress Yes/No

this lets multiple people have the same address, or lets one person
have several addresses

RelationshipTypes
RelationshipType Text Spouse, Sibling, Child, Parent

Relationships
PersonID1
PersonID2
RelationshipType
RelationshipDate
RelationshipEndDate


Note that you should not put a MarriageDate in the People table;
especially these days, a given person might have zero, one, two, or
more marriagedates. Instead the date that a marriage relationship
begins is a property OF THE RELATIONSHIP, not of either person.

You'll have a fair bit of work setting up Forms and Subforms for this,
but it's all doable.
John W. Vinson[MVP]


  #12  
Old January 28th, 2005, 12:51 AM
John Vinson
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On Thu, 27 Jan 2005 14:23:08 -0800, "
wrote:

THANKS! Now I may start this project as time permits or find some high
school kid that will probably get it done in an hour or two and I'll pay
them!!


chuckle "You can have it fast, cheap, or correct. Pick any two."

I'm a professional database developer. I wouldn't touch an app like
this with a bid under 20 hours, as you describe it. Geneology is
TRICKY and full of unexpected traps.

On the other hand, it's also popular. There are LOTS of good
family-history programs on the market. Go to www.google.com and do a
search; you may be able to find one that meets your needs already
built.

John W. Vinson[MVP]
  #13  
Old January 28th, 2005, 01:07 AM
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Thanks for the advice! I'll try a look up search. TJP

"John Vinson" wrote:

On Thu, 27 Jan 2005 14:23:08 -0800, "
wrote:

THANKS! Now I may start this project as time permits or find some high
school kid that will probably get it done in an hour or two and I'll pay
them!!


chuckle "You can have it fast, cheap, or correct. Pick any two."

I'm a professional database developer. I wouldn't touch an app like
this with a bid under 20 hours, as you describe it. Geneology is
TRICKY and full of unexpected traps.

On the other hand, it's also popular. There are LOTS of good
family-history programs on the market. Go to www.google.com and do a
search; you may be able to find one that meets your needs already
built.

John W. Vinson[MVP]

 




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