Hi, I realize that this is a pretty stupid question but I've been staring at my database for a solid couple of days now and I've been frantically sifting through my Missing Manuel, so thank you in advance for any/all advice.

I am creating a database for a photography collector, I have one "Master" table that I call Photographs which contains a unique record for each photograph in the collection. I also have an "Artist/ Organization" table. Both have an "Artist/ Organization" field, which is what I am using to connect the two tables.

My goal is to be able to put an Artist's name in the "Artist/ Organization" field in the Photography table and have it automatically create a new record with that Artist's name in the corresponding field in the Artist/ Organization table. I have checked the boxes "create new records via this relationship" on the side of "Artist/ Organization" but it doesn't seem to be working. Am I missing something?

Again, thank you in advance for all of your help and please let me know if you have any questions.

Did you need a One to Many relationship ( One Artist can have many Photographs ) ?

Yes, I want a One to Many

On my Artist/ Organization table I have a portal that lists all of the photographs attributed to a particular Artist (which works fine if I manually put in the artist's name in the A/O table)

Thanks, hope this is helpful.

I have checked the boxes "create new records via this relationship" on the side of "Artist/ Organization" but it doesn't seem to be working.

The box to check must be on the side of Photographs

The reason why no record is created in the Artists table is (I think) that you are not entering the name into a field in the Artists table. However, the way you are going about this is flawed on two counts:

1. Your relationship should be based on ArtistID (an auto-entered serial number field in the Artists table) rather than on a name. Names change, get misspelled, etc.

2. In your proposed method, if you enter the artist's name as "Adam", a new record will be created in the Artists table - even if a record for Adam already exists.

See also:

http://fmforums.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=76385&view=findpost&p=359668

Hmm, I tried that, which also didn't work, although I don't want to create a record in the Photographs Table, just the A/O table.

Thanks for the advice, potentially I may need to spend some time restructuring the database a bit to make it run more smoothly...

Maybe I'll add a button that would move me to the A/O table to create a new record or something of that ilk...