I'm new and trying to add a validation rule to the country field. The rule be set so that if the country is Not USA, the following message should appear. "Be sure to use the country code when calling outside the USA".

Basically if you type in USA, you shouldn't get a message but I'm stuck.

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Answer from Richard Rost:

This is not exactly what the validation rule is used for. The VR message pops up if the user enters invalid data for the field. For example, if you have a "number of children" field and the user types in -1, then you can yell at them.

For what you want to do, you're going to need a custom event. It's not hard, but you need to do it right. I would make an AfterUpdate event for the Country field… something like this:

If Country <> "USA" then
   msgbox "Make sure…"
end if

That's it. Here's a tutorial to help you out with AfterUpdate events:

You can use an AfterUpdate or BeforeUpdate event to set values, change properties, run macros, and do lots of other cool things.

The major difference between the two is that BeforeUpdate runs BEFORE the data is saved to the table, which allows you to CANCEL the update if the data is not valid. AfterUpdate runs after the data is saved to the table.

Please see the following FREE video tutorial on my web site for step-by-step instructions on how to create an AfterUpdate event:

http://599cd.com/tips/access/afterupdate-event-vba?key=BlFAlEx