Access Developer 42 covers products with options.

I'm not asking HOW to do the entire thing... just which is best. I guess I'll figure it out myself. Thanks.... sorta.

Hi Arlene,
Kevin's advice is good and on target! Think about a table for Products. That table can have fields such as color, size, Material, etc.
All your products will be in one table but you can identify any characteristic that you want. You can also make Combo Boxes that let you choose which size or which color.
HTH
John

Thank you. That's much more helpful.

As for what Kevin advised... The only thing I saw on Kevin's reply was to go purchase a developer course. I'm new to the forum (and 599) and I only saw (and still see) that. If there was more to his response, I never saw it. My apologies if that's the case but otherwise his post about buying a course wasn't very helpful, at least to me at this point and time in my learning. I'm still trying to grasp the beginner 1 and 2 courses so jumping to the middle of a developer course isn't likely to help.

YOUR advice was a bit more helpful though. Thank you! :)

Arelene -
First - Welcome!  I hope we see you around a lot.  Second - Sorry for the book to follow.

I'm jumping in here with my 2 cents.  Yeah while technically Kevin gave you good advice and as John said is on target, it didn't account for your specific knowledge level.

I know you have a specific need in mind otherwise you wouldn't have posted the question.  That being said, I really encourage you to put your project on the back burner for a little bit.  

It is very important to get the fundamentals down.  The topics covered in the course Kevin suggested are pretty complicated to the new user at least. When you are in learning mode watch the video first, then watch a second time and try and actually do the same db that Richard does.  That way you cement it in your brain.

The TechHelp is not meant to be a replacement for the full courses but a supplement to them.  You can however get a long way down the road with the videos.

Here are some links I think you should start on - in no particular specific order: (all of them- LOL)
Blank Template
Invoicing especially the extended cut.
Relationships
Combo Box
Helper Data
Too Many Tables
Query Criteria
Many-to-Many

Hope that helps!

Hi Arlene, your industry usually decides how your products should be organized, and you design your database accordingly.  My old job was clothing retail, where each product had multiple colors, and each color had multiple sizes.  So in that case I needed three tables, with a one-to-many-to-many relationship.

Thanks so much everyone. Really appreciate it. I should have explained my progress when asking the question. I'm up to many to many relationships in beginner 1 courses (which I've watched the entire course SEVERAL TIMES and just now started to grasp tables, forms, queries and reports .. and of course relationships. Which I think I have a handle on (for a beginner anyway). I'm trying to plan my database and that's where my question is coming from.

As for "my industry deciding how the products are organized", it's not really like that for mine... well, to a certain extent. I'm the business owner of a photography studio and us "togs" do things differently from one another. Some just shoot and burn on a device or host to a site to download, some sell physical products, some do both... some offer more services (consulting, preparing, retouching, hair and makeup, etc..), some sell "packages", some sell "collections" of prints and products... and of course I do the collections which vary the amount of images provided inside a luxury box, which comes in various styles, colors, materials, and sizes... which is where I'm having trouble planning my db tables since I can't figure out how to do the features portion.

I would just like a starting point as to how to plan my tables, but apparently it's more complicated than I thought. This is a bit too much for me I think. I was TRYING to save money from subscribing to a CRM service but I'm wasting soooo much time trying to learning Access (and the courses are MUCH more expensive than the service subscriptions lol) so ... not sure how much longer I'm going to attempt this lunacy. But I'm not giving up... just yet.

My hats off to you all. Seriously. This is lunacy LOL

If you sell diverse products and services, Richard may be able to advise you.  His site sells different things too: videos, memberships, downloads, paid services, etc.  He may have tips on how to set up a database to store diverse types of products.

I don't want you to think that we're just here to try to sell you more classes, but sometimes the moderators, who are all volunteers, don't have the time to type out a whole bunch of instructions. So, just referencing you to a class that might answer your question already is usually the easiest thing to do. Honestly, most of the time, I don't have a lot of time to reinvent the wheel with every student either, so I'll just say, "Go watch this video" or "Go watch this class." Kevin R. was just trying to point you in the right direction... And he's right; in that class, I do spend a ton of time covering the topic of how to deal with products that have multiple options.

Since you haven't taken any of my classes, the moderators and I don't know your skill level. Typically, when a student is enrolled in Beginner, Expert, or Developer courses, we can customize our response to match their skill level and provide appropriate information. However, as you're currently just a TechHelp Silver member (thank you for that, by the way) we lack insight into your proficiency. Thus, it's more challenging to offer the most fitting answer until we receive additional information.

When it comes to the specific topic at hand, there are numerous approaches to handle this. For instance, if you're in the business of selling t-shirts with varying sizes and colors'like small, medium, and large'here's a suggestion: Create an SKU or product table entry for each unique product. The simplest method is to employ cascading combo boxes. Initially, you select the desired shirt's product ID from a list. Subsequently, this choice updates the sizes combo box, offering size options. Following that, you'll encounter available color choices. This cascading structure provides a user-friendly interface for navigating and selecting the precise product.

I delve into this concept more extensively in my Developer class. However, it's worth noting that this involves a certain degree of programming complexity and isn't necessarily beginner-friendly. Thus, my recommendation, for now, is to continue learning and focus on comprehending relationships. I suggest beginning with my beginner and expert courses before venturing into programming projects of this nature. In essence, take it step by step.

That's the concise version of my response'hope it helps! 😄

Cascading should give you some idea of what I mean.

@Richard. Thanks for the 2nd response for "cascading", I've seen it before and it helped a lot. That actually what prompted me to attempt setting up my tables differently. But as for your first response ... What I'm confused about most is that I wasn't asking how to make it all work.. I was simply asking how to set up my tables.

I already apologized and said I should have said my level of learning in one of my other responses but the more I think about it, the more I wonder why everyone thinks I need to be a developer to set up my tables. I never once asked how to make it all work. I simply asked how I should set up my tables... like this, this, or this. And to be honest, I HAVE taken your class (the beginner level 1) SEVERAL TIMES even... I've watched it from YouTube mostly but even here so not sure what you mean about them not being able to see my level of learning. But whatever. I get it. Forums are like this everywhere.. everyone is misunderstood. I do it, and probably are doing it with your first response. It's all good. I'll figure it out eventually. Thanks for all the vids.

P.S. And the help at the bottom half of your first response. <3

Hi Arlene, Richard did give you suggestions on table setup.  

Making an Access app is not just about one thing.  Setting up tables involves many other aspects that you need to put EQUAL consideration to because they all need to work together.  There is no "misunderstanding" your question, because setting up tables is not just about setting up tables.

This forum is not like other "forums everywhere."  Places like Reddit, Stackoverflow and Accessforums.net are like the wild wild west where you have no idea whom you're dealing with.  In this site, you have to be invited by Richard to answer questions.  You won't ever get trolls, spammers, or other bizarre and nondescript characters corralled from every stratum of society (which is what the Internet is today, sadly).  Not to mention, this site has comprehensive training material.  I used to help out in those other forums, but now only serve this site.

I know.. I saw that (Richard's table suggestions). It definitely helped to grasp it a bit better.

I see what you're saying about the table setups. I get it now. But this is so friggin' hard! I truly think you guys are incredible to do this. It's so frustrating for someone like me who has taken website courses, learned a few computer languages, but even though it's been a while, this stuff is just baffling me. I spend HOURS a day doing tutorials from various sites, trial and error, procticing, etc... and the more I do it, the more things hit me like "OH, I SEE!" but it's taking so long and it's frustrating.

What gets me most is, it's not just ONE place you have to set stuff up to get it working the way you want. That doesn't even include the coding aspects! ACK!!!! I love how Microsoft calls it an "easy to use database tool". LOL big fat liars!

Thanks so much to everyone here. Hopefully (if I don't end up in a straight-jacket first) I'll be able to help some lost soul like me here too. :)

As Kennedy once said, we do things not because they are easy, but because they are hard.  Anything that is easy in life (such as switching on the lights, turning on the stove, etc.) is only that way because someone has done the hard work to make it easy.  

Objectively speaking, Access is about as difficult as early college computer courses (maybe freshman or sophomore).  That is usually the time when students are first taught databases, if at all.

Speaking as someone who has learned multiple programming languages and worked with multiple database systems, Access is about as easy as it comes. If you want to build a database in something like SQL Server, it's a lot more difficult. So, when I say learning Access is easy, that's relative to everything else that's out there; it's definitely easy.

But also, another thing is, it does take time. You have to put in the time and effort to study the stuff, to learn it, to go through the examples. The sample databases that have nothing to do with whatever you're trying to build generally give you insight into how to do what you want to do. That's why I always say, don't try to apply what you're learning immediately to whatever work project you're working on; let the sample lessons sink in. I always use the example of a baseball card collection. That's what I used when I was first programming; I built the database to track all my baseball cards and comic books. So have fun with it at first, and then it'll come. Just give it time.

Kevin: I appreciate the kind words, and I'm happy that you recognize that I'm trying to run a respectable establishment here, LOL. Yeah, I used to volunteer on a lot of different sites answering questions, but there's just so much noise out there that it's frustrating, even for me. I used to love a site I was on called AllExperts.com; that was quality too, but they shut down years ago.