A few MS Access questions -- is it buggy, or me?

Factual Questions
1

Okay, I’m slightly-to-moderately knowledgeable about MS Access, but my coursework was 5 years ago with MS Access 2002. So I’m rusty, and only slightly skilled at database development.

Now I’m trying to help build a DB with MS Access 2012 and getting weird things happening? Is this version of Access buggy, or is it just my ignorance?

(1) We’ve created some tables, and a form for each. The tables contain text fields. The form contains text boxes for these fields. Some of these text boxes (but not all of them) appear with spinners (the little up-and-down arrows, which usually appear only with integer fields or maybe date fields) to increment/decrement the value in the field.

Why do text boxes for character fields appear with spinners? The data for these fields will definitely not be numeric. How do I get rid of the spinners? Is there some particular property I need to tweak for these fields (either in the table definition, or in the form)?

(2) When I close the app and go home, and come back another day, I find things are broken that were working when I last left it. Lately, it’s been “RETURN without GOSUB” errors. :confused:

Some of these fields in some of these forms have little “After Update” events that I’ve written for them. When a number is entered into the field (which should be a Customer ID number taken from a drop-down list), I want to grab the customer’s first and last names (also from the drop-down list) and stuff them into two other fields on the same forms.

This seems to work just fine, except when it doesn’t. When I alter the CustomerID field, and then tab to another field, or when I attempt to close the form, I’m get this error (except when I don’t). But I’m not sure at all if the error is coming from my little event handler or from somewhere else. The error message, like most Microsoft error messages, doesn’t actually contain, you know, any helpful information.

Any hint on how to deal with either of these anomalies? Are these known problems that other have seen, or just bugs in my database?

MS Access 2010 Ver. 14.0.6023.1000 (32-bit)
Winders 7 Home Premium SP1

2

A bit more information:

Yes, it appears to give this error when I change the data in the ID field.

Here is the After Update event handler I wrote (showing the actual field names I used in this form):



Private Sub txtOwnerID_AfterUpdate()
    Me.txtOwnerName.Value = txtOwnerID.Column(2) + " " + txtOwnerID.Column(1)
End Sub

When I open Access, then open the database, then open the form, then modify this field, I get this error.

When I then switch the form to Design View and open this event handler in the VBA editor, then close the VBA editor (without making any changes), then switch the form back to Form View, then change the data in the field, it works just fine.

And continues to work just fine thereafter, until I close Access and then re-start Access again. Then it’s broken again.

Separate question: I’m a bit unsure why the left side of the assignment statement begins with Me. while the right side does not. (I just followed a similar example I found in a textbook.) The code certainly seems to be correct, since it works right when it works at all.