Not on list does not recognise '[' bracket

[Happy YN]

I have a dropdown combo which includes some entries which are bracketed e.g. [Bombay]
But when the user types in that exact string with the brackets, it traps it as not on list, offers to add it and then hey presto the user has managed to tot up at least 10 of these entries all identical!
Any ideas
Thanks

 

[RuralGuy]

You may wish to rethink the design. The bracket "[" is one of the Access escape characters.

 

[Happy YN]

What is an escape character and can I write code to work around it? I'm afraid my client cannot be governed by 'Access rules'!
Thanks

 

[RuralGuy]

You might try watching for the "[" in the BeforeUpdate event and prepend another "[" to the field. Doubling up on the character should pass one along.