Search up and search down behave differently when using Find?

[pemigh]

I have an almost-ready-to-install database with one problem. Data is
displayed chronologically, and when the user goes to the last record
and searches up to get most recent results, he often encounters a
critical error and the whole thing shuts down, often with no message at
all. (So often that I wasn't able to capture a message before writing
this.)

Testing on my machine doesn't cause a shutdown, but I do notice that
searching up haves differently than than searching all or searching
down, and I get a lot of flashing of subforms on the screen. I should
mention that the form is quite comlicated, with about a half dozen
subforms. One of those subforms has a nested subsubform, and another
is an unbound subform control that is assigned one of several source
objects depending on what's happening in a different subform.

One "solution" to the problem is along the lines of that old joke with
the guy stretching his arm behind his head while complaining to the doc
that "It hurts when I do this." To which the doc replies: "Then don't
do that." In this case, the user can do a descending sort and then
search down. I can, of course, also give him the option of making
descending sort the default.

But I'd really like to know if anyone has insights into this search up
business.

pemigh

[pemigh]

I've discovered that the problem is actually more general than this.

When navigating through records from the bottom up, I can move up one
record at a time without causing problems. But I have the same
problems described in the original posting if I try to 1) jump to the
top using the "first record" button or 2) move up a few or many records
by filling in the "record number" slot.

Any ideas on why Access prefers moving down to moving up through
records??

pemigh

[Phyllis Emigh]

I got it!

Through the process of elimination, I located the bottleneck. It's not
complex code, or all the subforms, per se. Rather, it's using the Link
Parent/Child Fields feature on one of the subforms. I already had the
subform recordsource criteria set to limit records to those that match
the main form. I set the default value for the foreign key in the
subform to the primary key in the main form. I expected to need a
subform requery for the main form's "on current" event, but it's
staying in synch on its own. (I looked through code and couldn't find
a reason for that. But at this point I'm just happy it works.)

pemigh