Now I see what I did wrong. I put in the EXACT wording and, when prompted, I
put in 1976. But, all the report gave me was the column GRADUATING CLASS
YEAR with the years 1976 (listed many times...as many contacts there are for
that year), 1977 (listed many times) and so on. It didn't give the contacts
and their addresses. What did I leave out?
If you want to see the values of fields in the Query... *include those fields
in the query*. A Query lets you select any or all of the fields from a table
(or from two or more joined tables), and apply criteria - in this case [Enter
Graduation Class], or any other prompt that you like - to one or more of the
fields. Access will search the table for records which meet those criteria,
and display the values of the fields that you have selected.
Typically one would not need to open the Query as a datasheet. Instead, you
can base a Form (to see the information on sceen) or Report (to print them on
paper, e.g. mailing labels) on the Query, and simply open that Form or print
that Report. The query datasheet is handy for debugging and making sure that
you have the query set up correctly, though.
You might want to take a look at some of the introductions to Access in Jeff
Conrad's "Database Design 101" links:
Jeff Conrad's resources page:
http://www.accessmvp.com/JConrad/accessjunkie/resources.html
The Access Web resources page:
http://www.mvps.org/access/resources/index.html
John W. Vinson [MVP]