merge cells in ms-access

Question

I'm using access 03. let's say i'm modeling a parties database. each party has some people invited. each party also has a location and date. when presenting the information in a form, i want to be able to merge the recurring cells. something like:

 _________________ ____________ ___________
|                 |            | invitee 1 |
|                 |            |-----------|
| partly location | party date | invitee 2 |
|                 |            |-----------|     
|                 |            | invitee 3 |
 ------------------------------------------

this is very similar to what you can do in ms-excel. is there any way to do it?

edit: sub forms have been suggested. however, it seems like when using sub forms i can only show one party at a time and i need to scroll between them using the arrows, when instead i want to show all the parties at once

Answer 1

On a form you could use a main form with the Party location and party date and then have a sub-form with the list of invitees.

Answer 2

Not by using the datagrid view of access.

You can achive this by constracting a form with a sub form, such that the main form will display the location and date, and the sub form, the list of invitees

Answer 3

Access just doesn't have the feature. You can do it in a report, but not a form. There are a couple of things that might come close. If you do a datasheet subform with a datasheet parent form, you will get expanding and collapsing cells. IIRC you can expand all cells on initial presentation programmatically.

You'll have to nest datasheet subforms to get to the third column in your example.

It might also be possible to use the form view to nest a couple of subforms to the level you need, but I think at some point you're going to run into some ugly scroll bars. It will be tough to make it look decent.

I'd give the collapsing datasheets a shot. Beyond that, I think you're looking at custom, 3rd party controls, which can be a pain in Access.

Answer 4

A Flex Grid Control will probably do what you want but you will need to write a bit of VBA code, have a look at my Flex Grid Demo program for some examples.

Go to http://www.rogersaccesslibrary.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=180

HTH

Peter Hibbs.

Answer 5

You can definitely do that with Access 03. Just create two tables: tblParty and tblInvitees. The tblParty table will hold the location and date information. The tblInvitees table will hold the invitee names. Create a link between the two tables with a "PartyID". You can enter information in a table, but it is best to do it in a form/subform fashion because it is easier to look at.