Hi Sue,
I completely understand your frustrations with Access, but giving up isn't
the answer...
First of all, you need to look at this the right way. You have multiple
thinggs going on, and your confusing them. You have tables (only 2, but
still you have them), and form(s), and then controls.
So, a form can be based on a table, and the controls on the form can be based
on other tables, or queries, or recordsets, and the list goes on.
So, you are having an issue with a control on a form. The previous posters
all discussed how to set the properties for these various components, but you
missed how / what they were talking about. Lets see if we can clear it up a
bit. So, you need to set the "Record Source" for the form. When looking at
a form in design view, you can tell what contol properties you are looking at
by what is listed in the drop-down box at the top of the properties window.
So, find the one named form, and the top item (on the 'All' tab) is
recordsource. If you want to work with data from your Contacts table, this
should be set to that table.
Now, when you place a combo box onto the form, it has a couple important
properties. The first one is 'Control Source' - this is what field in
the underlying table you want this control to modify / view / etc... (I
beleive you called it Contact Type in a previous post) The second one is the
recordsource. This one is used to populate the values that are allowed in
the table (In your case, you want the combo box to display the type, but the
primary key value - aka a number - to be what is stored in the field in the
table. Hope I haven't lost you yet...
So, you would want to make the 'RECORD SOURCE" property of the combo box the
lookup table (Contact Type). Do this by clicking in the field, then you
should see a drop down arrow on the right - and this should list all the
tables and queries in your database. Then set column count (right below) to
2, and the Column widths to 0;1.5 notice that this is zero (don't show the
primary key value), then a semi-colon, then a value in inches for how wide
you need so that you can see the text.
So, as long as the Form has it's record source property set to the table
(contacts), and the 'Row Source' of the combo box set to the Contact Type
table, everything should work as you want...
HTH (Hope That Helps)
Corey