Hi -

I've been at this too long and would appreciate programming help to do an x-lookup to a second database within the same application.

Here's what I've been working with:

[code]XLOOKUP("C:\Sesame\data\groceries.db", Category,"Publix Grocery!newdatabase0!category!category", "aisle", aisle)
if @error then @msgbox("Lookup Failed - Sorry!","","")[/code]

and numerous variations thereof, always in  Category::On Element Exit

The name of my file is:  C:\Sesame\Data\groceries.db

The name of my Application is:  Publix Grocery

The name of my primary database (for now) is: NewDatabase

The name of my primary form (for now) is: NewForm

The name of the element I am looking up from is:  Category

The name of my lookup database (for now) is:NewDatabase0

The name of my lookup form is:  Category

The name of my lookup field is:  Category

And, the name of my "value" field is Aisle.

I simply want to look up the category and have it retrieve and return the aisle number.

If I see my own error message one more time, I am going to scream ... so pleeease help.  lol

Thanks!

Hi -

Oops!  I cannot tell a lie.  As many times as I've read and heard it, I forgot that Xlookups do not work in Preview mode (yet) lol  OK, back to being serious.

First thing I did was change the name of the newdatabase0 form to Categories.  Also, now that I'm more involved in this, I will start practicing good naming conventions which Bob Hansen has been preaching to me since day one.  I always hated Access' naming convention like frmthis or rptthat, that I just wanted a reprieve for a while.  I'll be good from now on.  (And, I'm surprised that Mark beat Bob in pointing this out.  I thought Bob was the first one I would hear from about my sloppy, sloppy work - lol)

I'll also stop using old Q&A style programming - as much as I can - and start using variables more.  

Now, Mark's programming got me closer but I am still having problems.

Your writeln suggestion (as Mark has pointed out in the past) was definitely helpful.  

What this showed me is that SOME lookups did work and what was returned by writeln was the entire string of values in my Category::On Element Entry code.

[code]var vList as String

vList = "Air Fresheners;etc;etc;Coolers;Wines;Yeast"

PopulateListElement(Category;vList)[/code]

These values were exported from my "lookup" database so I expected there not to be any typos or inconsistencies between the values entered in the database and the values entered in code.

Yet, I am finding inconsistencies such as applesauce in the lookup database and apple sauce in my code.  I don't understand HOW that happened but at least it explains WHY some lookups are failing.  I'll see what I can do to straighten that out and get this thing settled once and for all.

Thanks very much to both of you for all your (continued) help.