I'm trying to save one of my users some time by scripting a repetitive task. I was able to accomplish (I thought) this task using simple SQL Update statements but then realized there was a lot of code in the background that was not running.

What I'm trying to do is a "ship complete" function that will populate the "ship_qty" field with whatever is in the "qty" field and also populate the "ship_date" field with the date listed in the parent form BUT it also needs to run all of the event based code behind the fields and subform.

Obviously the SQL update queries bypassed all of the code so the backend stuff didn't happen. (inventory updates, etc)

Does this make any sense? Is there an easy way to accomplish my goal?

Not sure I follow you completely, but you can run the query from inside your code. Just put:
DoCmd.OpenQuery "querynamehere"

HTH,

Dave

That's what I'm doing that's not working.

What I need to do is simulate user entry so that the "After Update" event fires for each field that's updated.

use a call statement to call the routines that don't fire. For instance:
--------------------------------------------------------
My_Combo.value = "New Value"
Call My_Combo_AfterUpdate 'Runs AfterUpdate routine of combo box when value changes in way that doesn't cause it to fire
--------------------------------------------------------
Just be careful of looping. Don't call the afterupdate from a function that gets called with the afterupdate routine.

What is the code in the After Update event of the main form? What is the event that you added to do your SQL update? I think you need to take the After Update event code and put it in line with the code you added on the event you added. Does that make sense?

If I had code that was going to repeat like this, I would normally put it in a module and then call it from all the events that I wanted to run the function on.

mmcdonal