My standard maintenance forms usually have 3 pages in a pageframe on the form:

1) The first page is the record information and maintenance tasks (add/edit/etc)
2) The second page shows the complete list of records (not fun when 10k items)
3) The third page is the "search" page

My search page looks somewhat like this:

A few meaningful search criterias text boxes.
A launch search button
A results list box at the bottom

- The user can enter full or partial keywords in any of the search criterias.
- The search button will build the appropriate SQL-query based on which criterias were entered and launch the query then fill out the results listbox
with matching records
- The user can then click a result from the list which refresh the record information page and brings them to it.

One of the things I like about this search interface is that it keeps a list of results that you can go back to. Suppose you have a 'city' criteria field and then then enter 'New York' as a partial keyword, the results would list all users from the New York office. You can than go back and forth between each'New York office users without having to launch another search.

Hope this gives you some ideas.

I can send you some form example if you want ;)

Pascal Charbonneau
Visual Programming