I wish to use a combobox as a record selector in an Access 2003 asset
tracking database. The problem is, the database is in 3NF, so eight of the
assets table fields hold only longint FKs, including those fields of most
value in selecting an asset record (e.g. current owner, asset category,
manufacturer, etc.). The combo presents only several columns containing FKs
after it's built. When you use the wizard to create the combo it only
permits selecting from the base table (Assets) for the main form, not from
other tables or queries.

I tried building a combobox with the wizard and checking the AfterUpdate
code to see how it was implementing the find record procedure. Then I built
an independent multi-table query to provide the text fields associated with
the assets table FKs. Worked fine, so I built another combobox using that
query, which displayed the fields I wanted, then went into its AfterUpdate
event and modified the necessary combobox names. When I try to use it,
nothing happens. No exception thrown, just nothing.

I come from a VB background, and am unfamiliar with Access VBA. Perhaps I am
not understanding the syntax. Here is the generated AfterUpdate code from
the (working) wizard-generated code:

Private Sub Combo119_AfterUpdate()
   ' Find the record that matches the control.
   Dim rs As Object

   Set rs = Me.Recordset.Clone
   rs.FindFirst "[AssetID] = " & Str(Nz(Me![Combo119], 0))
   If Not rs.EOF Then Me.Bookmark = rs.Bookmark
End Sub

Seems straightforward enough, but I don't understand this line:

   rs.FindFirst "[AssetID] = " & Str(Nz(Me![Combo119], 0))

From appearance, it seems to be extracting a non-null string from the
combobox and concatenating it with the first part of the FindFirst argument,
but which one? Obviously, for this to work, it must be getting the value of
the AssetID column, but how does it know, since the whole current row of the
combobox is contained in the argument [Combo119], isn't it? More to the
point, why won't it do that for my query-based combobox? Is there a bang/dot
notation I can employ to the same purpose, like [Combo119].[AssetID] or
maybe [NameOfQuery].[AssetID]? The key seems to lie in that line, so I think
that if I could grok it I'd be OK.

I would appreciate any direction anyone could give me, or a pointer to a
tutorial or article explaining how to implement this functionality using a
query-based combobox. I do not want to denormalize my database just for this
purpose. Thanks.

Scott