Its probably showing the numeric values correctly in the table as my guess
would be that the combo boxes are bound to numeric foreign key fields which
reference the numeric primary key fields of the other tables. The text
values you see in the combo box are values in another field in the 'look-up'
tables, but these are not stored in the table to which the form is bound.
You can set up a table so that you see the 'looked up' values from another
table rather than the actual numeric values in the column. This is done in
table design via the lookup tab on the column's properties sheet. In effect
the column in datasheet view of the table then reproduces the combo box you
see on your form. This is not something I would do myself, however, and most
other professional developers I know would not do so. Data should be viewed
and entered only through forms or output as reports. The raw datasheet view
of a table or query is something I would never expose to users in a
developed database application.
There are circumstances when you can have the text data in both the
'referencing' table and the 'referenced' table rather than using numeric
keys. This is where the values are unique. A table of US States for
instance can have just one column (unless you want a second one with the full
names as well as the standard abbreviated form) as these are unique, so a
referencing table would have the same values, not numeric key values. A
table of Cities would need a 'surrogate', usually numeric, primary key,
however, as City names can be duplicated.
