The plus sign (+) may not appear when you try to click the plus sign (+) to drill down into the related records of a child table in Office Access 2003 (912260)

SYMPTOMS

In a Microsoft Office Access 2003 database, when you try to click the plus sign (+) to drill down into the related records of a child table, the plus sign (+) may not appear. You experience this problem when the following conditions are true:

You use Office Access 2003 to link to tables that are in another database.
The tables are in a parent-child relationship.

Note You do not experience this problem in Microsoft Access 2002 or in Microsoft Access 2000.

WORKAROUND

To work around this problem, follow these steps:

Establish a one-to-many relationship between the parent and child tables. To do this, click Relationships on the Tools menu in Office Access 2003.
Create one form for the parent table.
Create another form for the child table.
Set the Default View property of both forms to Datasheet.
Add the child form to the parent form.

Note This workaround provides an interface to enter data as in earlier versions of Office Access.

MORE INFORMATION

Steps to reproduce the problem

In Office Access 2003, create link tables to the Orders and Order Details tables in the Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Northwind database. To do this, follow these steps:
1. On the File menu, point to Get External Data, and then click Link Tables.
2. In the Files of type list, click ODBC Database().
3. Select the data source to the SQL Server 2000 Northwind database, and then add the Orders and Order Details tables.
4. On the Tools menu, click Relationships.
5. Build a relationship on the OrderID field between the Orders table and the OrderDetails table.
In the Database window, open the Orders table in Datasheet view.

Note You experience the problem that is mentioned in the "Symptoms" section.