Norman,

Its sounds as if the notes form is a continuous form that you wish to
function as a subform control with a field related to the autonum on the
main form..  A popup form won't automatically number the Child link.

You can easily handle this using the OpenArgs property of the popup form.

If you are using the DoCmd.OpenForm method, it would look something like
this:

DoCmd.OpenForm "SomeForm", , , , , , [PrimaryNumField]

Where SomeForm is the name of the popup form and [autoNumField] is the name
of your Primary key.

On the popup form as the Default Property for the field you want to populate
with the primary key, type in [OpenArgs].

As soon as you enter a value on the popup form, the field will populate.

God Bless,

Mark A. Sam