>You are correct, a combobox is appropriate, and I have one. I was just trying to expand on the ability to search by tying a much more complete screen to the lookup function.

You could perhaps tie cancelling a "blank" in the textbox to when the next field in the form gets focus. IOW, don't validate the textbox in question until the next field gets focus. The problem with this approach is that it might be less than obvious when you revisit this form in 6 months, and also, if order of field entry is anything but heads-down data entry, the users are likely to end up with empty fields when they don't want them, or cancelled records they really wanted.

I'd keep to the KISS principle for this, but that's JMO, of course. < s >