In-text citations in long text field (1 Viewer)

Hello everyone,

Just a quick question to see if something is actually doable.

I plan to create a table called Citations with four fields: "ID" --> autonumber primary key, "Citation" --> This will be a drop-down list drawing records from the Table Bibliography, "Citation_Content" --> This will be populated with plain text, and "Notes" --> long text for notes.

I also plan to create a table with one of its fields being "Description", which will be of the long text type.

The question is the following: Will it be possible using VBA to call a form to add new in-text citations at the mouse cursor? This action will entail the following:
- Calling up a modal form to insert the new information for the specific citation.
- Copying the information entered in the modal form.
- Concatenating the information for the two fields "Citation" & "Citation_Content".
- Pasting the aforementioned concatenated information within the text of the "Description" field at the mouse cursor and creating a hyperlink to the associated "Citation".

Are the above reality or science fiction?

Thank you for any comments or ideas!

A hyperlink type field in table holds a value that is composed of 3 parts separated by # character and Access 'knows' when hyperlink field or control bound to field is clicked to open the link. Otherwise, defining a hyperlink needs HTML tags. Neither of these structures can be embedded in normal text in Access text field or textbox as a clickable link. I'm not even sure HTML link tags would be recognized in Access rich text.

In other words it is most likely in the sphere of imagination. Thank you for the clarification.

"Citation" --> This will be a drop-down list drawing records from the Table Bibliography,

Click to expand...

This sounds like a lookup field in a table, so No. This sounds like you're working in tables as the normal course of use - again, No.

plan to create a table with one of its fields being "Description",

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That is a reserved word, so IMHO, No again. Then there's ID. By itself can be quite ambiguous when/if you have to deal with several of them. Maybe check out
http://allenbrowne.com/AppIssueBadWord.html
http://access.mvps.org/access/general/gen0012.htm
https://access-programmers.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=225837

Also sounds like you want to merge the contents of 2 fields, which is generally not a great idea.

Micron said:

This sounds like a lookup field in a table, so No. This sounds like you're working in tables as the normal course of use - again, No.That is a reserved word, so IMHO, No again. Then there's ID. By itself can be quite ambiguous when/if you have to deal with several of them. Maybe check out
http://allenbrowne.com/AppIssueBadWord.html
http://access.mvps.org/access/general/gen0012.htm
https://access-programmers.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=225837

Also sounds like you want to merge the contents of 2 fields, which is generally not a great idea.

Click to expand...

The Citation will indeed be a lookup field, but all rules of normalization and proper relationships will be in place. Also, no multi-select or MVF used.

The Description field will not be named after reserved words, I'm aware of the issue, it is for the sake of clarity in this post that I've labelled it as such.

It is not exactly merging I'm after (that can be done with calculated fields and concatenation), it is being able to refer to values in a table from within a rich long text field in another table (similar to how Word associates text and footnotes or how in HTML you can use hyperlinks for certain words to link them to their bibliographic information - see for example: https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/8/2/31/htm). I know it's a long shot, but I was wondering whether because rich texts support certain HTML tags it would be possible to do something a bit more complex with it.

Micron said:

Then there's ID. By itself can be quite ambiguous when/if you have to deal with several of them.

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I agree, as that is how I started with tables, all with a PK of ID, now I would use EmployeeID, OrderID etc

However Microsoft have gone the other way with the Northwind DB. What used to be EmployeeID, OrderID are now all ID. ? :banghead: