Okay, so I have a table of data (let's call it tblCompleted from dbCompleted) and I want to create new records in tblCompleted based on a table in another database (let's call it tblDocuments from dbDocuments). All the records in tblDocuments have a text-type field called "ID." It's usually 4 digits (ie 1234), but some documents get revised, so sometimes ID is 1234A or 1234B, etc.

At the beginning of the Record Import procedure, I want to double-check that the ID of the current record in tblDocuments does not already exist in tblCompleted. But when the ID is pulled into tblCompleted in dbCompleted, it is not in its own field, it is simply concatenated in at the beginning of a Description field (so if ID is "1234", Description is "CR 1234: blah blah blah").

If I try to import 1234A and I use a SQL string to search for all tblCompleted records containing Like "*" & "1234A" & "*", the database would see if there was a previously existing ID 1234A, but would (correctly) overlook ID 1234. But if I'm trying to import 1234, and 1234A is already in tblCompleted, searching for Like "*" & "1234" & "*" will find 1234A, and the database will skip the import procedure, thinking (incorrectly) that the record already exists.

I tried using a different wildcard strategy, something like Like "*" & 1234[!a-c]" & "*" but that pulls up no records at all. I thought my syntax might be wrong, but ...1234[a-c]... does pull up 1234A, so I expected ...1234[!a-c]... to skip 1234A and only find 1234, instead of producing no records.

Is my criteria syntax just way out of whack? Is there a better approach to be sure that I am finding only the EXACT same ID#, and not a different rev of the same base document? I appreciate any thoughts on this, thanks!!