Specifying One Field for Unique Value

[vepz]

I have a list of part numbers and varying characteristics of the part in a table. I would like to be able to produce a list of unique part numbers along with the characteristics. I can create a query with a single field part number to determine the unique values of part numbers. As soon as I tie it to the characteristic table, I get more entries than I want. I have crated a 1 to many relationship but it is not function like belive it should. Can I include the entire table of part numbers and caharacteristic and somehow select the part number field to be unique?

 

[fneily]

You didn't post your table structures for clarity.
I'll assume a part can have multiple characteristics.
Can a characteristic belong to more then one part? I'll assume so. So you have a many-to-many relationship. You need a junction table.
Thus:
tblPart
PartID
Description
other part info

tblCharacteristics
CharID
Description

tblPartChar
PartCharID
PartID
CharID
other COMMON fields

So with tblPartChar, you can query on a single part and get all its characteristics.

See:
Fundamentals of Relational Database Design

http://r937.com/relational.html

 

[vepz]

Is there a way to create the extra tables required rather than re enter all of the data?

 

[fneily]

Select a table, click Tools - Analyze - Table. This will start the Table Analyzer which may help.
Or Create the tables and just do a copy/paste routine.
Or you can run Append queries.