Hi all! Thanks in advance for any help!! I'm an appraiser [commercial, not residential], and I'm just beginning to delve into Access to solve the lack of a good data storage system. I'm trying to track everything about every property that I come across, including the property I'm appraising and the sales, leases, apartment rents, etc. data that otherwise gets stuffed into a paper folder. My biggest "conceptual" issue is data entry and the issue of duplication. From my tinkering, I've noticed that anybody can simply hit the "next record" button and start typing away at a new record. It seems more logical to preclude this function, and instead invoke a button that both 1) searches for existing info, per address [including box #, street name, suffix, .... as well as city and county to avoid duplication that way], then 2) IF there are no matching records, THEN push that search's inputs into a new record and open up the ability to add new data to the new record. Does that make sense? So, first.. Is that even possible? If so, does anybody have any pre-written code to handle it?

You should have a table with a property ID set as a unique value. This table should contain property information such as address, and other things that don't change. Have another table that uses this property ID for records about activity. The logic about searching and adding new records would be contained in your input form.