George, the records in the subform are dependent upon there being a record in the main form. If you're specifying default values, that's great, but your record still has no VALUES in it until you enter that first bit of data. Then all of the default values become real values. You can check to see if the ID in the parent form IsNull and then throw up a warning message (or even set a value manually) but there has to be something in the parent form in order to get that value to make the relationship with the subform.