I have inherited a database for a car show. It creates many reports including voting for the various categories and is useful for that and other purposes. What is a real pain is that each year the car show occurs it is necessary to re-enter the entrants. I would like to use the information from the previous year(s) to autofill or look up this information so I am not spending hours doing entry. I have some limited database experience with filemaker and took an access class years ago.... Any help is extremely appreciated!!

I don't see any reason why you would not be able to retrieve the data previously entered. However, without any kind of information about the database, it's structures and its tables, it is almost impossible to provide a sensible answer.

if its the same, then there should be nothing stopping you copying that data to a new instance of the show
whether you can do that as an individual SQL query, or multiple queries or a VBA procedure or macros is up to you and the actual design of the system.

although it may indeed be a pain havign retype the same stuff each time there are several ways of looking at it
retyping means you only put in what you need to, there are less risks of redundant old data carrying over (eg where a company may have changed their name, web page, or may have special offer stuff this year
it means there is someone specifically responsible for what is on the system
there is no need to proof read each and every advert. its a lot tougher to spot small mistakes in a mass of data. especially if you have a lot of it go through, the human eye / brain combination is excellent at filling in the gaps or translating what you see into what you expect to see.

As Sinndho said, without any kind of information about the structures and Tables, it's very difficult to advise you on this matter. But for this kind of thing you should have at least two Tables which are linked in a One-to-Many relationship.

The Main Table, or One side of the relationship, would have all of the information on the entrants that you're concerned about having to re-enter each year, things like EntrantID (as Primary Key), name, address, phone number, etc. In other words, the static data.

The Secondary Table, or Many side of the relationship, would contain Fields such as EntrantID (as Foreign Key), date of show, and any other data which changes from year to year.

You would then display the Main Table data in a Main Form, and add a Subform to this Form that is based on the Secondary Table. The two Forms would be linked using the EntrantID, and as you move from one entrant to another the Records in the Subform would change, only displaying those related to the current Main Form Record.

Linq ;0)>

I use a form to enter info into the data base. Some of the fields have drop down menus that allow me to choose from a given set of values. Can I do the same thing to the last name field and have it fill the last and first name and perhaps car info into the form. I see I can change the field into a drop down via design view, but how do I then link to the list I want it to use?