Auto Enter County, State & Zip after entering City

What if I WANT the County, State and Zip stored in with each record?

There is a right way and wrong way to create a database. But there are sometimes methods in between. You have mentioned to use that you are very new to Access. And that's fine. You are doing the right thing by posting on a site such as this and asking for advice. My issues is when you get that advice you don't want to use it.

Relational databases, like Access, were first developed in the mid 1970s. The rules for design of such databases has not changed since then. In fact, the rules of normalization that define relational database design is the de facto standard. There are other types of designs, but the Relational model is , by far, the most popular and most efficient.

So when you ask us how to do something that is not normalized our answer will be to not do it. I've written a blog on how to display values from a related table on a form. That's the proper way to do it.

Hope this helps, Scott<> P.S. Please post a response to let us know whether our answer helped or not. Microsoft Access MVP 2010 Blog: http://scottgem.wordpress.com Author: Microsoft Office Access 2007 VBA Technical Editor for: Special Edition Using Microsoft Access 2007 and Access 2007 Forms, Reports and Queries

What if I WANT the County, State and Zip stored in with each record?

You should NOT do so.  That VIOLATES the rules of normalization and so you just DISPLAY them as you can get them with a query anytime.  Although I would store the CITY and ZIP CODE because a city, like Hans wrote, can have multiple zip codes and also some zip codes can actually split across towns depending on where they are.  I know because Tukwila, Washington and SeaTac, Washington actually share 98188. 

So, just so you know - you can use a QUERY in 99% of the places where you would use a TABLE so you don't really need to store the County and State IF you have the associated values stored in a reference table.

Bob Larson, Former Access MVP (2008-2010)

There can be multiple zip codes for a city, so you can't automatically fill in the zip code once a city has been entered or selected.

I should also mention that I'm SO very new to Access and this is a new database I'm creating to replace an old and very icky one that I do not have any forms or reports created yet. I'm still hoping I'll get sent to Access 2010 level 2 before I create those...

What if I WANT the County, State and Zip stored in with each record?