Roommate dinner planner, looking for a way for one column to look up from multiple tables

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#1

I would like to make a document to plan dinners between two roommates. There will be a set of restaurants only ordered from by one of the two roommates, as well as another set of restaurants from which both like to order. There’s a meal plan that only one of the two roommates cooks at home, as well as another set of meal plans on which they work together.

Since restaurants and home cooking plans are distinct types with different attributes (restaurants have phone numbers, URLs for ordering, business hours; meal plans have ingredients, preparation time, etc), I would prefer to keep these in separate tables.

I would like to end up with a table where the rows are Mon, Tue, Wed, Thu, Fri, Sat, and Sun; the columns are person 1 and person 2, and the cells within that table specify the dinner plans from each person, pulling from the correct available dinner options (either ordering from a particular restaurant or cooking at home) for each person. I know how to make all of the individual tables, but I don’t know how to establish a column that lets me reference multiple tables and choose either a restaurant or home cooking option for each cell. Is this possible? Is there another way I should organize this data? Are there any examples that would help me? Thanks

#2

HI Brett,

Welcome back.

What is the motivation for your preference to keep the data in separate tables?

I would seriously recommend to keep all the data in one table. If you want not to be confused by URLs when working with the homecooked meal plan, then create separate views. You can also edit in those views.

My task list contains birthdays, my grocery and other shopping lists, doctors’ and other appointments, birthdays, and mini projects, everything with date - all in one table. if I want to look at differnet subsets, there is a view. But if I want to see what is next for the week, I do not have to combine disparate tables, it is all there in one place.

Generally it is much easier to create views and filters, than what it is to combine tables.

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#3

Hi,

The motivation for separate tables is to make things harder than they should be, of course! I think you’re right, this data should be together in one table and it would allow me to easily get the resulting one-week dinner planner view that I want. Each row can have an attribute field (restaurant, home cooking) and the separate views and filters will incorporate that.

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#4

Yes, that is exactly how my task list works as well - I should have made that comment. There is a column called colTopic, and the topic would be birthdate, or appointment, as the case might be. What I am currently looking for is how to create “date entry” screens, so that I can have a button for “Add birthday”, or "Add appointment:. Just so that it looks nicer,