Custom row source for combo box in continuous form in Access

Question

I have searched around, and it seems that this is a limitation in MS Access, so I\'m wondering what creative solutions other have found to this puzzle.

If you have a

Answer 1

Disclaimer: I hate Access with a passion.

Don't use continuous forms. They're a red herring for what you want to accomplish. Continuous forms is the same form repeated over and over with different data. It is already a kludge of Access's normal mode of operation as you can't have the same form opened multiple times. The behavior you are seeing is "as designed" in Access. Each of those ComboBox controls is actually the same control. You cannot affect one without affecting the others.

Basically, what you have done here is run into the area where Access is no longer suitable for your project (but cannot ditch because it represents a large amount of work already).

What seems to be the most likely course of action here is to fake it really well. Run a query against the data and then create the form elements programmatically based on the results. This is a fair amount of work as you will be duplicating a good bit of Access's data handling functionality yourself.

Reply to Edit:
But as they are, continuous forms cannot accomplish what you want. That's why I suggested faking out your own continuous forms, because continuous forms have real limitations in what they can do. Don't get so stuck on a particular implementation that you can't let go of it when it ceases to work.