Make new field based on previous field's answer

[VictoriaAlbert]

I have a Field X in Table A that is populated with one of a few choices from a survey (Strongly Agree, Agree, Disagree, etc), and I need a new Field Y which converts that Text String answer into a number (Strongly Agree = 4, Agree = 3, etc), so I can do some basic calculations. Table B indicates which survey answer corresponds to which numerical value. I am looking for a way to populate Field Y automatically by having Access look up the entry for Field X in Table B.

This seems simple enough, but I am new to Access (would have used VLOOKUP in Excel). Because I need to do subsequent calculations on the values, I figure that creating a new field with the numbers would make the most since, and I only have about 100 entries, so time/storage should limit me from creating a new field rather than running a query.

Thanks for your help.

[pbaldy]

Standard design would be to only store the numeric value, but:

http://www.baldyweb.com/Autofill.htm