Hi Everyone,

I need to design a database in Access and I'm really confused.

I don't know how many tables to make, how they should be related etc...

The problem which the database has to solve is the following.

There is a College and it needs to send out many different types of Literature (eg Leaflets etc.). They need to send the different pieces of literature throughout the year to Schools in the area and record which school was sent what basically.

I think....
The database will need to keep a record of the names of all the different pieces of literature.

The database will need to keep a record of which school has received which piece of literature.

The database will need to keep a record of the addresses of the schools.

Would it be possible to use queries to search for different things such as which school has not received a certain piece of literature etc.

Is there anyway I can do all of this and how would it be setup in Access in terms of tables etc.?

Thanks so much

Yes, it can be done in MS-Access.

Think about the things you need to know, for example a document (leaflet) or a customer (school) or a shipment (one or more documents going to a customer). Each one of those things should be a separate entity (table).

After you've created the individual entities, then think about the relationships between those entities... Sometimes this is as simple as "one of these can have some of those", other times it is more complex in that you need to track how many and when (meaning you need a separate table to track the relationship itself.

Work through the process one step at a time, just like they showed you in class. If you have specific questions, post them here and I'm sure that somebody will be willing to help you get your homework done.

-PatP