Hi,

This may be a little difficult to explain but here goes:

I have a table in access 97 with the field Account. An account name is usually written as 0000000_A, but it MAY also have a secondary account and is usually written with the same first series of digits but ends in B e.g. 0000000_B. Therefore, we could have an account 0023654_A and 0023654_B.

Now for each account name there is another field called Items which are chosen from a combo box on a form (item 1, item 2, item 3, item 4, item 5, item 6, item 7 and item 8). An account may have more than one item.

Now if account B exists then it MUST contain the same entries as account A but can also have additional items.
So we could have a situation where:

0023654_A
item 1
item 2
item 3
item 4

0023654_B
item 1
item 2
item 3
item 4
item 5
item 6

Now what I am trying to implement is that if the core items (these are those that are contained in both - which would be item 1, item 2, item 3 and item 4 in the above example) are changed in either accounts making them not equal then a warning message should come up stating so. IT IS IMPERATIVE THAT THE CORE ITEMS ARE PRESENT IN BOTH.

I have some experience in Access 97, but unsure of how to tackle this. Could somebody please guide me ???

Not clear how you are holding the items. They should be individual records in a second table.

I would hold your account name as two fields, 0000000 and a or b. In your items table identify the items that relate to a b account. They you know that,
- an item that matches on the 0000000 with no b identifier links to an a account
- an item that matches on the 0000000 with any identifier links to an b account
This way you don't need to hold duplicated entries.