>>You and Nick both bring up a point I am just now starting to think about using a combobox to add new values to a table - namely, is this the kind of situation where I should use table buffering? I'm asking because if I were adding fields in the normal way through some kind of file maintenance form, I would. But what I'm trying to do here is circumvent the normal rules by allowing a value to be added to the table on the fly. I'm not even taking into account that (e.g.) they add this city and oops they mispelled it or something. I just figured they could go into a form maintenance routine and do all that stuff. But I guess the biggest issue is that someone else is using the table. Anyway, I'd appreciate your thoughts on this (clearly you allow for this in your class).
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>>Sylvia
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>This is one of the reasons I don't use combos neither for search, nor for populating lookup tables as well. I let the user enter a value (name, code, whatever). If it should exist in a lookup table, I check there, and as a feedback usually fill up some other read-only textbox(es) (i.e. if it was a code, I show the name, and maybe adress, unit of measure or whatever). If it's not there, I bring up a search grid (positioned at the best-guess position). The user searches the grid (incremental search on several columns), and if the item's not there, there's a button (or keypress of Insert) which brings up the entry form for that table. Afterwards, the grid is repopulated, and the newly added record is picked from it. This way I don't have two places where the records can be added; makes maintainance easier, and forces the user to check if there may be an existing record, thus mostly preventing double entries.

Dragan -

Yes, your reasoning is sound, and this is the very issue about which I was thinking. I've got something working now, based on one of the suggestions I received (and like it!), but I'm going to have to give this more thought.

Sylvia