InfoPath Dev

Hello - this is my first post here. I have been working with InfoPath and slowly getting frustrated and (wasting a lot of time...). I know there is a way to accomplish what I am trying to do, I just cannot figure out how to do it.

Version: 2003

I have an Access DB, with the following structure:

tbl_Users
-User_ID (PK)
-User

tbl_Contracts
-Contract_ID (PK)
-User_ID (FK - tblUsers)
ContractName

tbl_Reports
-Report_ID (PK)
-Contract_ID (FK - tbl_Contracts)
-ReportDate

tbl_ReportData
-ReportData_ID (PK)
-Report_ID (FK - tbl_Reports No Repeat: 1to1 relationship)
-ReportData

tbl_Escalation
-Escalation_ID (PK)
-Report_ID (FK - tbl_Reports this can repeat)
-EscalationTicketNumber (Text)
-EscalationNotes (Text)

The structure is designed so that each user can have many contracts assigned to them, and each contract can have many reports (idea is for one report per day). Each report will have one section of daily notes and a repeating section of all tickets that were escalated.

I am trying (desperately) to provide a drop-down that lists all the users, that when a user is selected a repeating section of all contracts is populated. From there the user would create a NEW report, add the data, all escalations and hit submit. That data gets saved to my database.

Right now, all I can seem to do is query a user and view ALL past reports and then add a new one... this is way too much info and I do not want my users to have the ability to edit past reports once submitted. If the ability to publish to my sharepoint page AND retrieve/post data into a lan based database exists that would be ideal!!

Hope I'm not oversimplifying, but could you just add a filter to the repeating table or section to not display if the Report Id is populated? I'm guessing you have that field set up as an identity in Access (not sure -- I use SQL, but I'm guessing Access has ID columns that auto increment?)

Well, I tried this approach, but once the control is hidden, it was totally hidden... i.e., NEW records couldnt be added either. I can query a user, and all of their records are returned, but when hidden, new records couldnt be added...

What was the conditional formatting you used? Is ID blank until a new 'Report' is added to the DB?

Really, I do not remember. I am having such a hard time getting this to work... Right now, I am only showing three levels on my form:

 QUERY FIELD FOR USERS: user enters last name and hits Run Query

 A repeating section bound to the contract fills in with each contract qassigned to the user. INSIDE that repeating section is another repeating section that lists the REPORT date. All I am trying to do is only show blank (new) fields from this point on.

 So, the user enters their last name, and a repeating section with each assigned contract fills in with the contract name - IF the user wants to add a report, they would click insert and adda report date and then add all the report details...

Right now, when the user queries their name, all the past reports are populated automatically. If I try conditional formating to hide the report date ection when it is not null, then it is hidden for every contract with no way to add a new record...