Creating a form to show all locations (for a particular year only)

I only want to show the current year's data, but I want all locations showing so that the user sees a full list of all the locations and can then pick out what locations during what months have been painted.

Do you mean you want to see ALL locations in a grid style (as you seem to be showing in your subform), regardless of whether they are in the Painting Schedule Central Block table? If so, then the only way to do that is to use temporary table.

So for example if you want to show all data for 2011, you would build a temporary table that include ALL locations, and a column for each month for 2011.

You'd then have to modify the records in that table, based on your STORED data (i.e. the data in the Painting Schedule Central Block table) - so you'd update each record in the temp table to indicate if they already have data for that year:

Dim rst As DAO.Recordset
dim rstTemp as DAO.Recordset

Set rstTemp = Currentdb.OpenRecordset("SELECT * FROM MyTempTable')

Do Until rstTemp.EOF
  Set rst = Currentdb.OpennRecordset("SELECT * FROM [Painting Schedule Central Block] WHERE LocationID=" & rstTemp("LocationID") " AND Year=" & YourYearValue)
  If Not (rst.EOF and rst.BOF) Then
    rstTemp("January") = rst("January")
    rstTemp("February") = rst("February")
    etc etc
  End If

  rstTemp.MoveNext
Loop


You'd then base your subform on the temp table. When the user has finished editing records, you'd need to move the data from the Temp table back into the live table.

the reason for these convoluted manipulations is due to the way your data is stored. If you could store the data in a more normalized fashion, you'd find things like this to be much easier. You'll also find that you'll have more and more issues down the road (i.e. when writing reports and such) if you don't go ahead and bite the bullet and normalize the tables now.

@lsmconsulting. - This is the way the perso  wants to see it..they want to see all the locations at one go and then just add painted locations on the fly...

"Do you mean you want to see ALL locations in a grid style (as you seem to be showing in your subform), regardless of whether they are in the Painting Schedule Central Block table? If so, then the only way to do that is to use temporary table."
So to take your suggestion on board of normalising the tables - one table for location and then a sub-form for each painting transaction..I presume..how can I normalise it and also get this format? thank you

one table for location and then a sub-form for each painting transaction..I presume..how can I normalise it and also get this format?

Essentially that is correct. We'd have to know more about the usage of the database to fully understand the best way to structure it, however.

Even with a normalized structure you'd have to resort to a temporary table to get the format you want, unless you simply store a new record for every Location for each year, and store a new (blank) record for each "transaction".

Alternatively I could just tell them that they have to enter new locations via the new  locations form and then it would be picked up in the sub-form...

Yes, get the user to enter the details in the form :-)