Enabling Auto-Complete in Form Fields

[jdanniel]

Hi everyone.

Normally, I do not like text to be auto-completed. However, I do have a form with a field that I want auto-complete for.

Right now, I can't figure out how to get a form field enabled with auto-complete. Is it possible to do this?

If so, what's the procedure? Thank you! Jd

[Villeroy]

A combo box is made for this. Open the form in edit mode. I assume a text field with several options availlable from the context menu. Select it. If it is grouped with a label, "Group">"Edit Group" and select the text field alone. "Replace with">"Combo box". "Control...", tab "Data". Specify the table or query providing the seed for auto-complete.

[jdanniel]

Are you saying I have to create a separate table for the combo box?

I asked about this in another topic. In Access, I think this is called a Lookup Table.

Do I have to create a separate table for each combo box?

Let me ask this:

Let's say I have five fields, and I want auto-complete in three of them. Will I have to create separate tables for each of those three fields, in order to have auto-complete?

And how do I link up these new tables to the original field?

Thank you!

[Villeroy]

There needs to be a list of values to do the auto-complete (auto-complete what?).
You can specify a field of an already existing database table, a field of an already existing query or a SQL string ("select query from scratch").
Let's say all those values populate a field "CategoryName" in table "Categories" and you can rely on unique category names, you specify content type "Table", content "Categories", field "CategoryName".
Let's say all those values populate a field "SurName" in table "Persons" with duplicates, you my specify content type "SQL" with content: SELECT DISTINCT "SurName" FROM "Persons".

[jdanniel]

Hmmmm.... it worked at first.... but now it doesn't.
I'm going to have to dabble with this.

[Villeroy]

Ah, this is the point where I'm stuck as well since I do not use Base forms. I'd suspect that adding a new item will fail in most cases, in particular if the form's underlying table has a relation to a tables of film directors. The foreign key specifies all the existing (thus allowed) directors. In this case you need to introduce a new director in the directors table before beeing able to add a new movie with that director involved.