Make Your Own Database Tutorial

Fields: Name, address, phone, grade, gender, school, teacher/advisor, project name, category (I'll explain this one when we make this field). Other data: Entry date, fee paid, paper work received, ranking or award.

Step 4. Making the database. Creating Fields. Radio Button Field

Sometimes your field's data is an either - or choice. Gender is a good example. The data to be entered will be either female or male. Harness the radio button field to ease data entry and assure a consistent entry.

Why is this an issue?

Suppose more than one person will be entering records in this database. If we had the gender field as text, you can enter any text. So one person enters male or female. But the next person enters boy vrs girl.

Problems will occur when you try to sort or report on a specific gender. Suppose you sort for male. The records with boy will appear at the beginning because sort is alphabetical. Next, the female records will appear followed by the girl records. The male records will appear last.

Or suppose you want to know how many females entered. You go Layout.. Find. In the Gender field you enter female. Your resulting records number will be incorrect because the records with girl entered in the Gender fields will not be included.

By making the field a Radio Button field you give the entry person a firm set of choices.

To resume adding fields:

1. Go .. Layout .. Define Fields

2. Enter Gender in the Field Name.

3. Change the Field type Popup menu to Radio Button. Click Create.

4. The Options for Radio Buttons dialog box will open.

options for radio Buttons dialog box.

5. Click on Item 1 in the Items for Control box.

6. Enter female in the Item Label box.

7. Click Modify.

8. Item 1 should change to female.

9. Repeat - Changing Item 2 to male.

10. Click OK. Click Done.

11. Save your database. ..s

You may choose to set Automatically enter as you see fit. In this case there is probably no clear majority.

If you are making a Radio Button for a banquet that is offering coffee or tea, you might set coffee as the default.

Label for Control: I just leave mine Gender.

Resist any reaction to the appearance of the database. You can make many modifications to the appearance in Layout view after you get all the fields entered.

More about Radio Buttons in my Database site

Once you enter the participants in your database you can now Find for female or male. This will give you a number of participants for each gender. Go tell the School Board there is a 20% increase in female entrants with ease!

Check out how to calculate with a Radio Button field

Next - Special field Popup Menu (Radio Bullet, Value List, Auto Date, Checkbox, Number)

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