MS access SELECT INTO in vba - sql

Question

I'm having some issues with some functionality of my application. There is a particular instance where I have an instance of a 'pending class' on a form for an administrator to review. The form is populated with students associated with this pending class. After their grades are finished, I have a button at the footer that will delete this class from my 'pending' table and add the grades to all of the students. This works.
However, I want to essentially copy this pending class, which just has the class name, date, and teacher to a completed class table before it's deleted from pending. Since no data about this class other than the primary key(class number) persists throughout this form, I can't populate the other fields(class name, date) of the row into my completed class table.
I am trying a "SELECT INTO" operation in VBA to get these values. It's going like this:
dim cname as String
dim classdate as Date
dim pid as integer
dim teacher as String
dim qry as String
pid = [Forms]![frmClasses]![txtID]
qry = "Select className INTO cname FROM tblPending WHERE tblPending.id = " & " ' " & pid & " ' " & ";"
db.execute qry
debug.print qry
debug.print cname
From here, I do the same operations for each other variable, build my INSERT query, and execute it. The problem is-- my select into's are not working. Debug.print shows that the local variables were never initialized from the SELECT INTO statement. Any thoughts?

Answer 1

First, having all classes in one table and just setting a "NotPending" or "Completed" column would be better.
Having two identical tables for classes and moving values from one into the other to indicate status changes is bad database design.
If you really need to do this by using two tables and copying rows, then you need an INSERT INTO query (and not SELECT INTO), as already mentioned by Remou in the comments, because SELECT INTO creates a new table (or overwrites an existing one with the same name, if already there).
The syntax for INSERT INTO looks like this:
INSERT INTO CompletedClassTable (ClassName, Teacher)
SELECT ClassName, Teacher FROM tblPending WHERE id = 123
And finally, you asked this in a comment:
So SELECT INTO is completely different in Access than Oracle? In Oracle and PL/SQL, you can select a row into a variable OR a table. In Access can you not select into a variable?
To load a row into a variable, you need to use a Recordset.
Example code to load your query into a Recordset and output the ClassName field:
Dim RS As DAO.Recordset
Set RS = CurrentDb.OpenRecordset("SELECT * FROM tblPending WHERE id = 123")
If Not RS.EOF Then
Debug.Print RS("classname")
End If
RS.Close
Set RS = Nothing

Answer 2

Seems you want to retrieve a text value, className, from tblPending where tblPending.id matches the value found in your text box, txtID, and store that text value in a string variable named cname.
If that interpretation is correct, you needn't bother with a query and recordset. Just use the DLookup Function to retrieve the value, similar to this untested code sample.
Dim cname As String
Dim pid As Integer
Dim strCriteria As String
pid = [Forms]![frmClasses]![txtID]
strCriteria = "id = " & pid
cname = Nz(DLookup("className", "tblPending", strCriteria), vbNullString)
Debug.Print "cname: '" & cname & "'"
Notes:
I assumed the data type of the id field in tblPending is numeric. If it is actually text data type, change strCriteria like this:
strCriteria = "id = '" & pid & "'"
DLookup() returns Null if no match found. Since we are assigning the function's return value to a string variable, I used Nz() to convert Null to an empty string. Alternatively, you could declare cname As Variant (so that it can accept a Null value) and get rid of Nz().