Forget about masks and validation rules. You should model this with two tables, in broad outline as follows:
Categories
....CategoryID (PK)
....Category
Contacts
....ContactID (PK)
....FirstName
....LastName
....CategoryID (FK)
....etc
In the contacts form the control for the CategoryID foreign key column would be a combo box set up as follows:
ControlSource: CategoryID
RowSource: SELECT CategoryID, Category FROM Categories ORDER BY Category;
BoundColumn: 1
ColumnCount: 2
ColumnWidths: 0cm
If your units of measurement are imperial rather than metric Access will automatically convert the unit of the last one to inches. The important thing is that the dimension is zero to hide the first column.
The user can either select the category from the combo box's drop down list, or type the first character of the category, which by virtue of the control's AutoExpand property being True, will select the appropriate category without the need for the user to
type the remaining characters.
As regards adding a check box to a form, select the check box control from the Controls area of the Design ribbon while in form design view and drag and drop it onto the form. If the control is to be bound to a Boolean (Yes/No) column in the form's table
set the ControlSource property of the control to the name of the column. I'd strongly advise that you change the control's Name property from the meaningless default name which Access gives it to a name which reflects its purpose, e.g. if the column
to which it is bound is named Active for instance, name the control chkActive.
Ken Sheridan, Stafford, England
Input Masks and Validtion Rules in Access 2016
