How would I make a form which searches for values in all tables of a database in access - ms-access

Question

I am trying to make a form which searches for the value inside all of the tables in the database (there are more than 1 table). The result will be displayed as the name of the table which this appears in. If someone can help me that will be nice.
In short, I have a form with a textbox and button. I enter the search string (for example 183939) and click on the button. It searches the value (183939) inside all the fields in the tables in the database, and if the value is found, then it displays the name of the table that it appears in. Thanks for the help.

Answer 1

I think this is a bad idea because it could take a very long time, and provide confusing results due to also searching system tables... but the following function will return an array of all table names containing the search term or nothing if it wasn't found. Calling example is such: theTables = containingTable("hello") where theTables is a variant. A limitation is that this will fail for multi-valued fields.
Function containingTables(term As String)
Dim db As Database
Dim tds As TableDefs
Dim td As TableDef
Set db = CurrentDb
Set tds = db.TableDefs
For Each td In tds
For Each f In td.Fields
On Error Resume Next
If DCount("[" & f.Name & "]", "[" & td.Name & "]", "[" & f.Name & "] LIKE '*" & term & "*'") Then
If Err.Number <> 0 Then
Debug.Print Err.Number, Err.Description
Err.Clear
On Error GoTo 0
Else
containingTables = containingTables & td.Name & ","
Exit For
End If
End If
Next
Next
Set tds = Nothing
Set db = Nothing
'Alternate Version
if Len(containgingTables) then containingTables = Left(containingTables, Len(containingTables) - 1)
'Original Version
'if Len(containgingTables) then containingTables = Split(Left(containingTables, Len(containingTables) - 1), ",")
End Function
To display the results with the alternate version, just use: Msgbox(containingTables(searchTerm)) where searchTerm is whatever you are searching.

Answer 2

Me as well i don't know why you would want to do something like that...
I think the solution posted by Daniel Cook is correct, i just took a slightly different approach. Do you need to match the exact value like I do? Anyway, here's my code:
Function searchTables(term as String)
Dim T As TableDef
Dim Rs As Recordset
Dim Result() As String
Dim Counter
Counter = 0
For Each T In CurrentDb.TableDefs
If (Left(T.Name, 4) <> "USys") And (T.Attributes = 0) Then
Set Rs = T.OpenRecordset
While Not Rs.EOF
For Each Field In Rs.Fields
If Rs(Field.Name) = term Then
Counter = Counter + 1
ReDim Preserve Result(Counter)
Result(Counter) = T.Name & "," & Field.Name
End If
Next
Rs.MoveNext
Wend
Rs.Close
End If
Next
If Counter = 0 Then
searchTables = Null
Else
searchTables = Result
End If
End Function
You should filter out duplicated values, in case the function matches multiple times the same filed in the same table.