Kevin
I do not have Access on this computer, but I looked at your DB. One of your lookups uses a table of names (I do not remember what you called it, but I will call it "tblPersonnel"). In your table you had two fields, lets call it "autoPersonnelID" , and "strName". So your data looked like
autoPersonnelID strName
1 John Smith
2 Mike Brown
3 Steve Robinson
Now in your main table you saved a value from tblPersonnel, using a lookup. The lookup is a little evil. It draws the records from tblPersonnel, but what you do not see is that it draws both fields. Unless you specify otherwords it hides the first column (autoPersonnelID) and shows strName. When you select a value it actually puts in the value of the first column. So when you pick John Smith it actually puts 1 into the table, but through formatting of the lookup it shows John Smith. You can see this by building a form and changing the combo box to a text box. You will then see a 1.
So normally DB designers do not let people type directly into tables, but into forms. So you can still have lookup like capability (comboboxes), but on the form. That way if I save 1 in my table I will see a 1 when I look at it, but see John Smith on my form.
So how to fix it. I would go ahead and turn the lookups off in your table. Now your tables will show the data that is really in there. For data entry on a form, you can have a combo box. The combobox will do what the lookup did. It will draw both fields, hide the autoPersonnelID, show strName, but store autoPersonnelID. The wizard should show you how.
In a combo or list box the "rowsource" tells it where to get the records to display, the "controlsource" tells it which field to save the value in (or display if a value is present). If you want to use a combobox for a search control, you do not want to save the value into the table so ensure that there is no field listed in the "controlsource" property. This is called an "unbound" control because it is not tied to a field.
Once you have a unbound "search" control, you will have to write a little VBA. (Again I do not have Acess open, but I thought the Wizard will build a search control. I will need to look. I do not use the wizard). The code needs to fire on the after update of the search control so as you select a value it will find that record. In your case the user will select John Smith from the combo, the combo actually returns 1 and search the main table for record/s with 1 in them.
Provide a little more info on where you want this search control to go, and what you want to search.
