I want to make a simple database that would greatly help me easily reference my notes I have for writing some books. I have 2 years of notebooks that I have been jotting down ideas and now that its time to put pen to paper I do not want to miss any of the ideas I had. The notes are not in any order so I need to get some kind of method to the madness.

What I am looking for in a database is fairly simple, I think. I will give an example of what I am looking for so it's easier to understand.

Let's say I wanted to make a db of all the comic book characters, vehicles, etc. I want to have one area that I would be able to write a description of Superman for example. Then in that row I would want to do maybe a series of checkboxes like "Marvel", "DC", "character", "vehicle", "alien" etc. I was thinking anywhere from 30-60 checkboxes.

Then I would want to be able to list the entries via each checkbox. Like it I wanted to pull up all the entries that I checked "Marvel" for I could. Also could I pull up entries that have "Marvel", "vehicle" and "villain" checked.


Is this something I could create w/ access or could I step down to Excel. Is there any templates out there that are close to what I am looking for? Anyone have any ideas to better accomplish what I am looking for?


Any ideas/help I get will be greatly appreciated! Thank you!

Here's how I would do it:

1. Create a table for the "items" you want to document with at least 2 columns:
a) ItemID, Autonumber, Primary Key.
b) ItemName, Text.

2. Create a table with all the "attributes" ("Marvel", "DC", "character", "vehicle", "alien", etc.) with also 2 columns (at least):
a) AttributeID, Autonumber, Primary Key.
b) AttributeName, Text.

3. Create a junction table with also 2 columns (at least):
a) FK_Item Number (Long), Foreign Key to the "items" table.
b) FK_Attribute, Number (Long), Foreign Key to the "attributes" table.
The Primary Key for this table is composed from both columns.

4. Each time you want to allocate an "attribute" to an "item", you create a row in the junction table receiving a copy of the primary keys from both tables ("items" and "attributes"). If you want to remove an attribute for an item, you delete the row in the junction table for that "item"-"attribute" association.

Thank you for your instructions, I'm finding it easy to build what you suggested. I will come back here if I run into anything else =D

You're welcome!