>Put the grid in its own div, then load the div content from a partial view when you need it
>
>>I am actually now very close to the final solution!! Just may need a bit more help on jQuery as I almost got it the way I wanted. I just need to figure out how to not load the grid the very first time.
>>
I went with my initial idea as this seems to be easier to me at this point. So, I changed the view to be

<form id="frmClientsSearch">
        
        <label for="clientNo">Client No: </label>
        <input type="number" name="searchClientNo" class="numericOnly" /><br />
        <label for="clientName">Client Name: </label>
        <input type =  "text" size =25 value ="Please enter the search value"
            name ="searchClientName" />
        
       <input type="button" id="btnClientsSearch" value ="Find / Refresh" />      
</form>

and in the Client controller method I now have this code

public ActionResult Client(FormCollection formValues, int? searchClientNo = null, string searchClientName = "Please enter the search value")
        {
            // Assume we want to select everything
            var clients = Db.Clients; // Should set type of clients to IQueryable<Clients>

            if (searchClientNo == null && searchClientName == null)
                clients = clients.Where(c => (c.Number == searchClientNo));
            else
            {
            if ((searchClientNo ?? 0) != 0) //Number was supplied
                clients = clients.Where(c => (c.Number == searchClientNo));

            // If clientNo was supplied, clients is now filtered by that. If not, it still has the full list. The following will further filter it.
            if (!String.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(searchClientName)) // Part of the name was supplied
                clients = clients.Where(c => (c.Name.Contains(searchClientName)));

            }

and so initially the view comes with that text and nothing in the grid and once I put values in the seach controls, they start to work.