I have been looking thru some of the items on searching (on forms) but so far have been unsuccessful with my attempts. Does anyone know of a way to turn a form (used for data entry) into a search form? Ideally (perfect world), click a button and all fields turn into search fields, enter as much criteria as you like, then click a "run" button to execute the search. I'm probably dreaming, so if anyone has a plan B idea I'll take that too! Thank you!

Have you tried using the query option? You can do simple searches from the form using the Filter option, but it has limitations. Hence use a query.

If you want to be able to enter criteria into a form, you could have an unbound form (not based on a particular table or query) where you enter criteria and then have a query that pulls the input from those comboboxes to use as criteria for the query. You can reference a particular combo/text box from your form in your query by putting this on the criteria line under the appropriate field name:

Like "*" & [Forms]![yourformname]![yourtextbox] & "*"

Use the asterisks if you want users to be able to enter partial words.

This has been great help and I'm starting to get somewhere. But I am having problems with one of my fields on the "Search" form. It's corresponding field in the query is actually an ID field but it displays a name instead of an ID number. On the table that my query was created from, the field is setup as a lookup to the table that contains the ID number and corresponding name. So all of my other search boxes are working fine, but I guess due to the setup of this field (the ID number to the name) it won't work. Any suggestions? Thanks again!