Merging 2 .odb databases with identical fields & adding new entries to a database without it displaying it at the end

[Pancake]

1. I’m looking to merge 2 .odb databases with identical fields. I don’t see any way of doing that.

2. This database is for employees and their spouses/dependents. When an employee has a child, it is entered into the database. However, if employee 101 and his wife have a child and it is entered into the database that has 500 employees, it appears after employee 500’s info, instead of after the employee 101’s wife’s entry. Is there a way to sort new entries or something similar so that new entries appear where they’re supposed to?

Thank you for any help!

[Wanderer]

@Pancake

merge 2 .odb databases with identical fields

Naive approach: Oben both .odb, then select a table in first odb, choose copy from context menu, select "sam"e table in destination and use paste.
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The above will surely fail, if you have ID-fields with collisions.
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So one workaround could be to copy into calc first, remove or change IDs there, then copy from calc.
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The other method would be to create a temporary table in your destination (same properties as the destination) and copy to this temp-table. Now you can write an INSERT INTO -statement to copy in the real destination, then delete the intermediate temp-table.
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PS: You simply should not care where (by id) your data is stored. It is the task of your database software to find this accordingly. You will need either an additional field or a complete table to manage this anyway. The simple idea would be to have an related-to column storing the Id of the employed person. Then you can always sort/group by this.

[ayjay]

Does it matter whether the records are retained in the numerical order of the original data input? I am using a database of Census forms, where the name of the Spouse and Mother are included as separate fields. If you have both of these fields in your database, try Sorting the database under “Mother’s name.”

[ayjay]

Hi again, My previous suggestion was based on using the Mother’s Maiden name - which you may not have. Sorting your database on the Mother’s surname might be an option, especially if, as often happens these days, the Surname of the Spouse/Partner, may not be the same, so depending on which Surname you wish to use, try sorting on that.