I don't know what crack they're smoking. Their technique seems strange to me. Anyway, I got it to work a different way. (Work as in the GQBE grid doesn't screw it up. Haven't tested with actual data.)

gimme a few minutes to write it up....

Thanks in advance tommyrot-- I am really going now or I am going to be late for class, but I will take a look later. Again, thanks for your time.

OK, for their example with this criteria:

Criteria: Forms![QBF_Form]![What Customer ID] Or Forms![QBF_Form]![What Customer ID] Is Null

on the [Customer ID] field - do this instead: put the following in a new field cell:

[Customer ID]=Forms![QBF_Form]![What Customer ID] Or Forms![QBF_Form]![What Customer ID] Is Null

The GQBE grid will alias it for you - that's OK. Then in the criteria cell below it, put 'True' (no quotes). You might also want to uncheck the 'display' box for that new field. So all we're doing is putting the test into a new field, and then using a 'True' criteria against the result of that test.

Does this make sense?

eta: You don't need to do that other stuff I told you. But some think it's a good idea to not use spaces in table, form, query and field names.

eta²: The technique they showed should work, but we've never done anything exactly like that. But regardless, when you take the query and open it up again in design view, it screws up the displaying of the query. And if you save it again it'll save the screwed up version. That's enough reason to not do it that way.

eta³: One potential problem with both ways is if you enter something into a field on the form as a criteria and then clear out the criteria, you might end up with an empty string in the field rather than the Null that was there when you opened up the form. So the query will only show records with an empty string in that field. If that's not what you want, do your new field cell like this:

[Customer ID]=Forms![QBF_Form]![What Customer ID] Or nz(Forms![QBF_Form]![What Customer ID],"") = ""

The 'True' criteria stays the same.

But some think it's a good idea to not use spaces in table, form, query and field names.

I'd suggest not using anything put numbers, letters and underscores. It would be easy for a programmer to miss a case with a special character. As someone who has written a GUI SQL editor I can attest to the pain that special characters can be on the code side of things.

Yeah, Access will let you get away with spaces in such names. But we almost never do it, as you never know when it's gonna cause an error or problem.

The only time we might do that is if the results of a query are being directly exported to a spreadsheet or somesuch, and the customer wants an easily-readable header for each column.

OK, OsX 10.3.9. USB external drive moderate weirdness. Sometimes it doesn't appear in the finder automatically, though it is definitely there (going to the terminal and cding to the right place shows it's there, and files on it are accessible.)

By going to Recent Folders under Finder/Go, I get it to appear on the desktop (and in the folder display thingie, but not on the side that lists the HD, network and users.) In any case, then I can eject it.

Anyone else run into this weirdness?

It's work-aroundable, obviously, but...weird.

Slipping in with a question about jerky video. Not like "Crankyankers" or anything like that...just stuttery playback on cbs, cw and pretty much any other 'watch full episodes on the 'net!' sites.

It's weird because tonight, when I went to the cw front page, their previews worked fine...click on an episode though?...stuttering sound (a sentence, then a pause) and choppy video.

Mozilla help is giving me no love in re increasing memory to Firefox.

What shall I do? t /damsel in distress

eta specs: emac running 10.4.8 with 1GB sdram

Sometimes I like to come into this thread just to read all of these posts that make absolutely no sense to me. I find the technobabble soothing.

Thanks tommy and Gud. To be fair, Kristen, I have no idea what I am posting either!

Is there some easier, better way to do what I am doing? I am trying to make something easy for my boss-- so she can do a report (get a class list) on mulriple variables-- That is, the only real way to know you are getting the correct class is with one field, the course ID number. I was hoping she could do something like type in the name of the course AND the start date, and come up with the right course. Or if she needed to see just the courses offered in a certain year, she can do that. I could force her to use the course ID number, but this works against the ides of convincing her that one large database is better that doing a flat database in datasheet view for each class with their contact information , keeping an excel spreadsheet with their payment information and hand-typing the reciepts. Which worked fine when there were 2 classes with ten students each, but not so much with 70 classes with up to 60 people each.

I sort of want the solution to be quick, because the database can do all I need it to right now (reciepts, deposit reports, form letters to students) but I need it to be easy for her to find this info so I can test the database out with some classes we are running now. The other reason for not spending much time in it is that this is an interim solution, as in about a years time, we are probably going to have something built for us by an actual database designer.