RE: [plum] NumberOfBrainCellsDroppingQuicklyPleaseHelp

[Dan]

A Primary Key IS designated in your _db Table. An Alternate Key is also referred to as a Candidate key; this is a key that uniquely identifies rows in a table. It could potentially serve as the primary key. There can be more than one candidate key and a candidate key may be composed of more than one column. For example, if the Contact_table contained columns: ContactID, ContactName, EmailAddress, etc. You would designate in the table ContactID as the PrimaryKey. Now, a key, any key, must uniquely identify a row, so ContactName would be a bad choice as an Alternate Key because you could have two, or more,  contacts name “Mark”, but pretty much you would never have two identical email addresses, so choosing EmailAddress as an Alternate Key would work.    Alternate Keys can also be two or more columns. You could designate ContactName + ContactPhone as an Alternate Key.  You might have two records for Mark, but not for Mark + 800-770-1234.   By The Way (BTW) your best friend is Google. As the incredible Dave Watts (at Fig Leaf Software) once said: “It’s not how smart you are, it’s how fast can you Google.”     Hope this helps,     Dan Kaufman     -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Mark Fuqua Sent: Sunday, May 01, 2005 4:59 PM To: plum@mail.productivityenhancement.com Subject: [plum] NumberOfBrainCellsDroppingQuicklyPleaseHelp   Hey guys,   I'm losing my mind.  Considering how small it is, this is not good.  Please help.  What is an alternate key.  I have done searches everywhere.  Can not find a good concise answer.  I am trying to do a simple filtered select.  The documentation says that the display column must be a key, most likely an alternate key.        "displayColumn is the name of the column to display in the filtered select menu. Must be a key column; most likely this will be an alternate key column. Defaults to the value of primaryKey."   What do they mean by alternate key and how can I set one in Access2000?   Thanks a lot,   Mark Fuqua