James,

I think the suggestion was to use a character field in the combobox, containing "1","2","-1", etc., and then use the VAL() function to convert to an integer before saving back to the tables. So you could keep the tables as integers.

However, if you use a character field of width 2, it only uses 2 bytes, not 10.

Personally, I would not be terribly inclined to use negative numbers for status codes. *grin*

Have fun frying those fish!

>Yes - when I have all of my lookup tables (for classification codes) using an integer for the Unique ID and the combo box showing the name, and converting old system data to have the unique id of -1 ...
>
>it messes up what I had planned for my application ...
> -1 = old system classification
> 0 = user not selected classification
> 1 to = new system classification
>
>I will have to forgo the use of -1 instead or redesigning ALL of my tables, especially since integers take up only 4 bytes versus a character field of 10 bytes.
>
>But that's my kettle of fish to fry <g>.
>
>James
>

Steve Gibson