Auto Complete A Subform

[dgutsche]

Hello there. I am a novice access user creating a database with two tables - one of 'Tickets' and one of 'Cylinders'. Each ticket is associated with multiple cylinders. What I am trying to figure out how to do is have fields in the main form (for tickets) generate some of the data in the sub-form (for the cylinders).

- I want to use the field 'Ticket' in the main form (ie: 1557) and the field 'Number of Cylinders' (ie: 5) to auto-populate 5 records in my sub-form where the values for the field 'Cylinder' in the sub-form are "1557A", "1557B", "1557C", "1557D" and "1557E". This matches our indexing convention used in our materials lab.

- I want the user to input a date field 'Date Cast' in the main form and then based on the field 'Age' for each record in the sub-form, calculate a future date which will populate in the sub-form's field 'Break Date'.

I was hypothesizing I could use the Auto-complete characteristic of each field to calculate these values for me. Even if I just get a hint in the right direction that will help me tremendously! By building this rather small database I am hoping to develop skills so that in a couple months time I will be more prepared for replacing the main database used at my work place (which is a massively complex one with several tables and several forms. Thanks so much for the help anyone and everyone!

[June7]

Fields do not have an Autocomplete. A combobox has AutoExpand property and is not relevant.

This will require VBA code. Programmatically generating custom unique identifier and creating records are both common topics.