Geezer's suggestion of using the Combobox Wizard with the third option is the standard way of doing this, but you have to make a calculated field to base it on, unless you're sure you'll never have two or more associates with the same last name.
The problem is that if the combobox is pulling a record based only on the last name, and you have, say
Allen James
Allen Kevin
Allen Leon
the record for Allen James will always be retrieved. The command the combobox wizard uses is
rs.FindFirst
which does just that; finds the FIRST record in the recordset with the last name of the selected row. The fix for this involves using a calculated field in a query. If the form is based directly on a table, you need to make a simple query including all the fields of the table, and then change the RecordSource for the form from the table to the query. If the form is already based on a query, more's the better. All form really should be based on queries, for situations just like this.
Now open the query in Design View, and in a blank "Field" box enter this code:
CompleteName: [LastName] & " " & [FirstName]
Save and Exit Design View
Run you query now to make sure you have it right. You should now have a field named CompleteName, with the last name and first name in it, separated by a space.
Now, delete your current combobox, create another combobx based on your calculated CompleteName field that you just added to the query. Not only will Access take you to the correct Allen, if you keep entereing the name (typing Allen L for instance will take you to Allen Leon) when you click on Allen Leon it’ll take you to his record.
