I have a form with a combo selection box to select which persons to bring up, what I want to be able to do is open the form blank or as in the northwind mdb(I think) have the fields not live.

Then when you select the person, as if by magic all data appears.

my question is HOW?

Thanks Ian

look in the developer solutions sample database.

check out the edit products form. this is pretty close to what you want. the 'trick' is that the combo box is in the form header and the detail section is disabled until a selection is made in the combo box.

they used a couple of functions enablecontrols and disable controls. look in the modules section. (there are other ways of doing this without using the functions)

hth,
al