Concatenating Fields Combobox

Concatenating Fields Combobox. Just in case you do not know what concatenate means, it means to join or link items together as one. So, in Microsoft Access it means to join two or more fields together to create a new field, with the total of the fields joined together. You can also add text, etc.

For this example of concatenating fields combobox, we will use two fields, ‘Surname’ and ‘FirstName’, just interchange these field names with the ones you wish to use.

First of all, add a combo box to your form, following the Wizard, choosing the above two fields.

Then right click on the combo box and select ‘properties’ from the drop down list to open the properties window.

With the properties window open click on the data tab.

Then, place your cursor next to ‘Row Source’. Two buttons will appear. Click on the ‘…’ button. This will open the query underlying the combo box. It should have the two fields, as per above, and is also likely to have your primary key field.

In the query design grid, in the first available column in the ‘Field’ row, type the following:

NewField: [Surname] & “, ” & [FirstName]

As Surname and FirstName are field names, include them in square brackets. The comma and the space is text and therefore you need to enclose them in talking marks. All of these components are then joined together with the ampersand (&).

NewField will become the name of the new field in your query, and the value in this field should look similar to this:

Misson, Julie

Click on the ‘View’ button on the tool bar to have a look. When finished, return to Design view.

If everything looks okay, delete the Surname and FirstName individual fields from the query design grid. You will no longer need these.

Close and save the query.

Open the form in Normal view and see how your combobox looks. You may need to adjust the ‘Column Count’ and ‘Column Width’ properties, depending on what fields you have added, which ones you have concatenated, and which you have deleted.

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