How do you populate a field bound text box with an unbound text box value?

[theosgood]

I have a table, MOL, that has a text field Offer_Desc. The powers that be decided that they wanted 5 pieces of information in a specific order and each piece should be editable. The first piece can be a price, a % off or a $ off and the fields already exist in the table. I added the other 4 text fields to the table. The idea is to concatenate these 5 pieces of information into the Offer_Desc field.

I created a form with the 7 total fields. I then created an OfferDesc text box with the control source:
=IIf([Item Promo Price]=0,IIf([Category Discount]=0,Format([DollarOff],"Currency"),Format([Category Discount],"0%")),Format([Item Promo Price],"Currency")) & "; " & [Gender] & " " & [VendorName] & " " & [ModelName] & " " & [ItemDesc]. This works great. (thanks again PBaldy for that answer)

Now I need to use the value in the text box to populate the Offer_Desc field. I tried setting the Offer_Desc default value in the table to the same expression, but it does not recognize either the field [Item Promo Price] or the default value.

I added the Offer_Desc as a hidden field in the form and set the default value = to OfferDesc using a number of syntaxes, with/without [], using the form name, tried a dlookup, This is a tabbed form with all info in the first tab. Tried moving the Offer_Desc field to a following tab and adding a me.refresh for on click of the tab. Nothing seems to be working.



How does one populate a field bound text box with an unbound text box value?

[ssanfu]

The default value property only affects NEW records. Since you have a hidden control bound to the "Offer_Desc" field, use the FORM Before Update event to push the calculated value into the hidden control.
Try this:

Private Sub Form_BeforeUpdate(Cancel As Integer)
   'Offer_Desc is a     hidden, bound     control
   'OfferDesc is  a calculated, unbound control
   Me.Offer_Desc = Me.OfferDesc
End Sub

[theosgood]

Thanks Steve. I was thinking in terms of the field alone. Putting it at the form level made sense as soon as I read your reply.