I'm not trying to insult anyone who's trying to help me, but I don't
feel like anyone but Gina is actually making any effort to help. Any
post that mentions "data entry" or "forms" is ignoring my situation.
No one here has actually suggested an alternative to my methods that
would work given my circumstances, unless they are really implying
that I should re-renter 3 years worth of data from 3 different
projects using forms. Maybe I'm confused on the use of forms for
importing preexisting data and that's my issue. Would it even be
possible to use forms to do what I'm trying to do? Meaning import
data from various files in various formats? As for commenting on my
"end-users" etc., I know them (and my situation) a lot better than you
do. It's not possible for them to do their jobs without writing
queries and it wouldn't be possible for me to write every possible
query they might need for them. I'm working in a completely different
field than most of the people who use Access, and juggling several
different databases from several different projects. Making them as
intuitive as possible is indeed high on my list of priorities, which
is why I'm using a lookup field in the first place. The databases
I've designed for my own use don't have a single lookup field, but my
boss thinks they're the bees knees and doesn't want to stare at a
bunch of foreign keys that don't mean anything to her. You can take
it up with her if you think that makes her an idiot. For now I need a
way to import preexisting data and data from other sources that will
ensure that it complies with the data integrity rules I've set up.
Using a lookup field is the simplest way I know of to do that. I
could also import the data into new tables and use subselect queries
to compare the values in the imported table to the allowable ones, but
that leaves me with no simple way of correcting the errors, and I
still need to copy and paste or append the data to the existing table
when it's corrected. What advantages would that really have in my
situation? And how could that possibly be more intuitive?

I'm here looking for help with MY SITUATION, not to be your soapbox.
I don't need a lecture but a couple suggestions would be nice. And
don't worry, when all the data is finally brought together and I know
it's accurate, I'll work on convincing my boss to let me convert that
lookup to a simple foreign key, and the comboboxes I have in my forms
will do their job. Getting to that point is my issue.