Victoria,
An unbound control simply refers to an control that does not have a field
from any data source as its data source. Only "bound" controls (those that
have a field from a data source as their data source) have the ability to
store values entered into them in the data source without you having to write
code to take the entry and add it to a specific record set.
Any value you enter into an unbound textbox is temporarily stored in the
"Text" property of the textbox control. When you close the form and then
reopen it, that temporarily stored value is cleared.
If you want to save a value entered into an unbound textbox control, you
could create a table in your database to hold temporary values and the use
code in the OnClose event of the form to write the desired value to that
table in the appropriate fields. Then in the OnOpen event of your form you
would need code that would look for any values in the appropriate fields in
the table that holds the temporary values and if any values exist, those
values would then be assinged as the value of the appropriate textbox or
other control.