Question : Setting up invoicing system

Hey y'all
On a scale of 1-10, I'm at about 4-5 with Excel, 3-4 with Access, 1-2 with VBA. Not completely "computer dumb", but far from expert. So..

What I am trying to do is set up an invoicing system. Hopefully, upon opening the file, the user would select a supplier's name from a list in a combo box, and the rest of their info would display in the appropriate cells (street address, phone, etc.). That would be the basic setup. I already have the blank invoice sheets set up ready for input. I also have a seperate workbook with all of the supplier info on it. I would like to keep this supplier info in a seperate book because I also want each month's invoices to be in their own seperate books for tracking purposes. My book for May invoices, for example, has the blank invoice, then sheets for each individual invoice, marked D0501, D0502, etc. D=dept. code, 05=May, 01=invoice sequential number.

I've tried everything I can find with the combo box. I know how to get the cell for Phone #, for example, to look in the cell for supplier name (from combo box) and use vlookup to get phone # from my address table. My problem is that I have to have both books open for this to work, and then only sometimes. It's not consistent. I tried VBA to get both books to open together, but no joy. Microsoft Help sucks, not intuitive at all. There's gotta be a simple way to do this.

Maybe Access would be better. I'm just less familiar with it than Excel. How do you draw lines on a report in Access, for example?

Would creating a template in Word be better, with a link to vendor supplier info in Access??

Any help would be greatly appreciated. I hope the hair that I've pulled out grows back soon.

Thanx in advance.

Answer : Setting up invoicing system

Yes, that's exactly correct.

1. when you use the wizard you choose the columns you WANT to see and the ID column is hidden. But the ID is what is stored so it doesn't have to store great big words and such.

2. Change the field name to be SuppID or something--that's fine, you can change it. Make the caption be "Supplier" because that's what they'll see in the dropdowns--Supplier names.

3. Never name a field something like just ID. You'll run into trouble and this is the perfect example. I discuss this stuff in the first like I gave you above. At that link, I also suggest something like this:

Name of table:  tblSupplier
Fieldnames:
SuppID
SuppName
SuppAdd1

If you had done that, the field would have come in automatically with a name of SuppID, which of course would not have interfered with ReqID.  :)

And I hope you don't have pound signs in your field names either. Here's the link again: www.theofficeexperts.com/access.htm