Wildcards

[vbaInet]

Before we even delve into this, why don't you use a dropdown Combo box?

 

[ddrew]

Before we even delve into this, why don't you use a dropdown Combo box?

OK i will explain, the form is to allow a user to add items to combobox on a separate form.. The items fall into four categories, Cadaver, Drugs, Explosives and Money.
On the form for adding items there is a list box that is Alpha numerically sorted. I want all the items grouped to make them easier to find, so to force that, each once is designated Cadaver, Drugs, Explosives and Money followed by a set of brackets. The text box is initally populated by pressing one of four buttons, Cadaver, Drugs, Explosives or Money.

The textbox then gets populated with either Cadaver (), Drugs (), Explosives () or Money ().

From this I want the user to only be able to type between the brackets.

 

[vbaInet]

Oh yeah sorry, I'm with you now.

I would do as was suggested in posts #14 and #15. No need to meddle in too much code and slow things down.

 

[vbaInet]

To the left you will have one textbox with "Cadaver(", in the middle will be where the users enter the values and finally to the right you'll have ")".

You've seen this same sort of design on the web for example when you're asked to enter your date of birth or international dialing code. The textboxes are sometimes split.

 

[ddrew]

To the left you will have one textbox with "Cadaver(", in the middle will be where the users enter the values and finally to the right you'll have ")".

You've seen this same sort of design on the web for example when you're asked to enter your date of birth or international dialing code. The textboxes are sometimes split.

So this is basically concatenation? Im assuming that after update with then bring them all together in the listbox?

 

[vbaInet]

Yes, concatenate the values of all three textboxes and save it to the field.

 

[vbaInet]

Or if you want to do things properly you would create a second table that will contain the words "Cadaver", "Drugs" etc. Link this via an ID between both tables and for display purposes concatenate the parentheses to the value.