title: applying a lookup to a field deletes values already in the field (MS Access 2010)
body: <p>I came across an excellent lookup wizard tutorial:</p>
  
  <p><a href="http://www.jegsworks.com/lessons/databases/basics/step-lookupwizard.htm" rel="nofollow">http://www.jegsworks.com/lessons/databases/basics/step-lookupwizard.htm</a></p>
  
  <p>I have a difficult situation though, because my table already has data in the field on which I am applying the lookup. This is because I have a table i'm importing from Excel.
  This already contains the name of the staff member who created each record in the record_created_by field. After the import, I want to apply a lookup to retrieve staff name values from tblStaff_members. This will make future data entry is easier, the user just has to select from the list. However, when I apply the lookup, Access wants to delete the values already in the field in the table I imported.</p>
  
  <p>This means I have to update the field with the data that was in there. I could do it manually with the lookup dropdown menu, but this would take a long time for the 500+ records. </p>
  
  <p>One way I thought of doing this was to use an update query, since the field, presently, has only one value throughout - my name (this is a field tracking who has created each record, values may change in future as other staff members update the table). I found, however, that an update query does not work on a field with a lookup already applied.</p>
  
  <p>Any way out of this difficulty?</p>
  
  <p>Wil</p>