Access Master/Detail Continuous Form

Continuous Forms for Master and Detail Forms

Have you ever tried to put a subform into a master form and both forms be continuous?

Can't be done right?  Here's a simple method for having both forms in continuous view with automatic coordination of records.

Here is the setup for our example:

In this example we have customer orders (types of tee shirts with designs printed on them). Customers may order more than one style of tee shirt in the same order.  They can also indicate the different sizes they want and the quantities for each.  In the standard for setup you'd only be able to see one of the styles within the order and the associated list of sizes.

With this example method you can show all the  styles and all the size selections for any particular style.  This give you more of a total picture of the order.

Here's the same form in design view:

The trick is to place the subform in the Footer of the main form.  In this case we have three forms:  1st for the customer; 2nd for the Style Order Items; 3rd for the size/quantity for each style.  So, we insert the 'F_Order_Items_Details' form in the footer of the 2nd form.  Note that the Link Child and Link Master fields are as they normally would be - the index-unique field of the master table and the foreign key to this table as the child link field.

There's no manual coordination of the forms required.

Note that if you get an error:

A form with a subform object can't have its DefaultView property set to Continuous Forms.

Just acknowledge the error and change the parent (master) form back to continuous in the Default View of property sheet and then both master and detail forms will remain as continuous forms.

**NEW:  Download a running example of the continuous-continuous forms at our Access database download center.