bracketing of field name in query (Access 2002)

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I’m getting a strange error. I have a query that uses the field on a form in the criteria line. The query works fine when I first go into it. I can preview the data and all is well. But if I modify the query in any way, even just picking an additional field out of one of the tables, then I get this error: “Invalid bracketing of name ‘[forms!frmBldg!time_frame_id]’.

The criteria line actually looks like this: [forms]![frmBldg]![time_frame_id]

Can anyone see a problem? This same field is also defined in the parameters in the same format.
The database was originally opening in Access 2000 format, so I converted it to 2002 to make sure that wasn’t causing a problem. I don’t really know what else to check. This is something that I use quite often and have never had a problem with it.

Thanks for your help!
Frances Donahoe

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Certainly seems strange. Does the problem persist if you quit Access and start it again?
Perhaps, there is some kind of corruption. Try deleting [forms]![frmBldg]![time_frame_id] entirely and typing it in again. If that doesn’t help, try recreating the entire query from scratch.

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It didn’t help shutting down or retyping on the criteria line, but I retyped the values in the parameters window also and that corrected the problem. Thanks for your help!

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You’ll find that Access 2002 is very picky about forms references in its parameters. You absolutely MUST use square brackets around the parts of the reference or Access will kindly put a pair of square brackets around the entire expression, which is invariably wrong. If you leave out a pair of brackets (for example, when referencing a column of a combobox), it will put square brackets around the entire expression as well. This can bite you if you convert a query from an earlier version of Access where the query engine wasn’t as fussy.

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