Here is my dilema, i need to create a form where there are multiple pull down bioxes ( ie hair color, eye color, ethnic background etc etc) and them have those values inserted into a query to define a recordest. I work for a security company and we need to be able to gain quick access to the suspect information. so basically after these boxes are selected they need to push a buttn to get a subset of all the suspects in the system that match the criteris they provide, bear in mind that if a pull down box is left empty i need it to not effect the query results, sometimes we may only have say 3 of a possible 10 criteria available to us, im confused by how this can be done, or if it can be done

please help

First of all, i woudl try and ensure that all the information in the database is validated, there's nothing worse than searching for a person with BROWN eyes only to inadvertedly find someone's entered BROWM.

Given that you are confident in your data you can then go about searching for the matching records.

Although I won't go into major detail, you should be looking at working with the ISNULL, OR, LIKE, BETWEEN, AND Operators.

Dependent on how you want the search to run and how fast will depend on how you design it.

Ian

O.K. fair enough, thinking this would be a problem i set all the fields that the searches would be done on to "limit to list" and added a list of choices. this list is the same lists being applied to the combo boxes on the form. My dilema lies more in the insertion of the multiple boxes into a sinlge query that i am basing a result form on... does that make any sense

Putting criteria on the same row of a QBE grid means AND, if you put the criteria on separate lines it means OR.

Again look at the LIKE and IsNull operator for how to deal with empty fields in your criteria form.

Ian