can't build a link between unbound forms

Question

I have two tables in my database, Person and Action. Person has a one-to-many relationship with Action.

I'm trying to build a Main form that has a Person form and an Action form on it, so that when an entry for Person is clicked on, the corresponding entries in Action show up in the Action subform.

But when I view Main in Design mode, and click 'Link Master Fields' in the properties for the Action subform, I get this error message:

Can't build a link between unbound forms.

How can I set up this master/child relationship?

Answer 1

You can only link form which have data bound to them. Really I suspect you want your Action form to be a subform of Person not for both of them to be sibling child forms of a "main" form.

Answer 2

I know this thread is two years old but, as I was facing the same issue, I found that it actually is possible to link two unbound forms.

The trick is simply to input the master and child fields manually in Design mode without lauching the MS Access 'Link Master Fields' routine.

For example, I used the following to link two unbound forms on two separate criteria:

Master fields: tsObjectID;obObjectID [;etc.]
Child fields: tsObjectID;obPackagingUnitID [;etc.]