Is there a V-lookup effect in Microsoft Access? - forms

Question

I am a novice self-teaching Microsoft Access.
I have an MS Access database with a table of students (Table1).
Table1
+----+-----------+----------+------------+------------+
| id | firstname | lastname | Year_Group | Form_Group |
+----+-----------+----------+------------+------------+
| 2 | mnb | nbgfv | 7 | 1 |
| 3 | jhg | uhgf | 8 | 2 |
| 4 | poi | ijuy | 9 | 2 |
| 5 | tgf | tgfd | 10 | 2 |
| 6 | wer | qwes | 11 | 2 |
+----+-----------+----------+------------+------------+
Every day students days are recorded sort of like Table2.
Table2
+----------+----+-----------+----------+------------+--------+-----------+----------+
| Date | id | firstname | lastname | Year_Group | Effort | Behaviour | Homework |
+----------+----+-----------+----------+------------+--------+-----------+----------+
| 28/02/19 | 2 | mnb | nbgfv | 7 | Good | Good | Y |
| 28/02/19 | 3 | jhg | uhgf | 8 | OK | OK | Y |
| 28/02/19 | 4 | poi | ijuy | 9 | Bad | Bad | N |
| 01/03/19 | 5 | tgf | tgfd | 10 | Good | OK | Y |
| 01/03/19 | 6 | wer | qwes | 11 | Good | Good | Y |
+----------+----+-----------+----------+------------+--------+-----------+----------+
Is there a way (when using a list box or combo box) to select a student from Table1 so that their information is used for the corresponding columns in Table2?
Or is there a more efficient way to do this?

Answer 1

Firstly, you should normalise your data.
Currently, you are repeating the firstname, lastname, and Year_Group data in two separate tables, which not only bloats your database, but also means that such data must be maintained in two separate places, potentially leading to inconsistencies and then uncertainty as to which is the master.
Instead, I would suggest that your Students table should contain all information pertaining to the characteristics of a student:
Students
+----+-----------+----------+------------+------------+
| id | firstname | lastname | Year_Group | Form_Group |
+----+-----------+----------+------------+------------+
| 2 | mnb | nbgfv | 7 | 1 |
| 3 | jhg | uhgf | 8 | 2 |
| 4 | poi | ijuy | 9 | 2 |
| 5 | tgf | tgfd | 10 | 2 |
| 6 | wer | qwes | 11 | 2 |
+----+-----------+----------+------------+------------+
And the information pertaining to each school day should only reference the student ID in the Students table:
SchoolDays
+----------+----+--------+-----------+----------+
| Date | id | Effort | Behaviour | Homework |
+----------+----+--------+-----------+----------+
| 28/02/19 | 2 | Good | Good | Y |
| 28/02/19 | 3 | OK | OK | Y |
| 28/02/19 | 4 | Bad | Bad | N |
| 01/03/19 | 5 | Good | OK | Y |
| 01/03/19 | 6 | Good | Good | Y |
+----------+----+--------+-----------+----------+
Then, if you want to display the data in its entirety, you would use a query which joins the two tables, e.g.:
select
t2.date,
t1.firstname,
t1.lastname,
t1.year_group,
t2.effort,
t2.behaviour,
t2.homework
from
students t1 inner join schooldays t2 on t1.id = t2.id