Database Linkage Help - When your linking field is not unique

[Nagasaki]

Hello,

I have two databases, Invoices and Mailing, each with one table. What we want to be able to do is link our invoices and mailing databases together. We figured the easiest way to do this is to link them through the full name field. So ideally, when someone buys something, we will enter their full name and their corresponding mailing information will pop up, assuming they are on our mailing list. This is all well and good, and I could join the databases in a heartbeat if it weren't for one problem -

obviously there are many people who share the same full name.

What I don't want to have happen is that I type in a full name that is shared by others, and just have the first record for that name populate the mailing info fields. Instead,if indeed it is the case that there are multiple people with the same name, I want to instruct the database to pull up a list with all of the records of people sharing the same name, so we can then say, "Oh, are you the John Smith that lives in Los Angeles?"etc. My question is, is this possible?

Thank you in advance

[mr_vodka]

Why not try something like this?

[Nagasaki]

Something like that would be perfect! Here is what I have done so far to get myself there - I joined my invoice and contact management database by the field "full name." I then set up a value list in the invoice database that pulls values from the fields "full name" and "city" from the contact management database. My question now is - Is there a way to type into the the full name field in my invoice database, and as I am typing, have it jump down the list to automatically match the name? What I am trying to keep from doing is having to scroll through 10,000 contact names starting from "a."

Also, if you can recommend a better way to set this up instead of what I just outlined, please let me know.

Thank you!

Edited March 9, 2007 by Guest