Even though this was not my original post, I'm quite interested, as I have the same need and had solved it by forcing the default. I did put in the recommended line of code for my listbox and when the form opens, I do see the top record surrounded by the dotted line, but the form data is empty. The form data in my design comes from a query that uses RecordNumber as the bound column in the listbox to retrieve the record from the master table. With a default value, the appropriate line (not the top) is hilited as black and the remaining form data is populated. which indicates the query has run. I appreciate any further clarification, as this problem has bugged me for a year on several applications that are similar. This is for charitable events and not for pay, so the users can't complain about how it presently works!