>Barbara:
> it is dropdown combo box. The control source is public variable. In the valid event I put in codes to capture the value of the field, it return empty value. thanks.
>sherry

Have you looked at my combo class available in the UT Downloads? This will solve your problem. All code is there. All you have to do is populate the combo with values from your table, set some property values and you are done. The caveat is, you have to add code to the MQUERY method to select the records for the combo source into an array property of the combo class. This is real easy to do an an example SQL command is provided in the MQUERY method.