Your question is a little confusing. I think you're using "value list" wrong. A value list is a combo box that has the list of items stored in the row source, not a table.

Row Source = "Joe; Mark; Sue; Bill"

That's a value list combo box. If you're pulling data from a table, then that's a Table/Query (relational) combo box. Now as far as the rest of what you're trying to do goes, I can't picture it. Can you provide some screen shots and additional information so we know what, exactly, you're trying to do. Remember, we can't see your database from here.

Sorry I explained that badly.  Here's a screen shot of the table, the field I need to update.  I want to use an update query to change the value to whatever is in a linked table (Excel file).  Thanks!

I strongly recommend against using value list combo boxes directly in the table field like that. You can't easily update that list. Make a small table with that data and use an ID and a relational combo box. If you want that table to be linked to an Excel sheet, you can, but it's going to run REAL slow. Better off periodically importing the data from Excel, especially if it doesn't change a lot.

Thank you. I will remove the lookup and value list from the table.  The excel spreadsheet is a report that is pulled from live environments daily.  I need to update the table in my DB daily as well with this information so my assumption was linking to it and running the update query nightly was my best option.

Just make a button that imports the sheet whenever you want to refresh the data in your table. Linking directly to Excel works, but it's notoriously slow.