Are you sure that the control is pointing to the database??

if so then why not try an SQL statment like

DIM dbs as database, rst as recordset

set dbs = opendatabase("c:\mydb.mdb")

set rst = dbs.openrecordset _
("SELECT column1, column2 " _
"FROM tbltable;" _

or if you wanted to you could also make a condition like

set rst = dbs.openrecordset _
("SELECT column1, column2 " _
"FROM tbltable " _
"WHERE column1 = 'whatever' " _
"OR column2 = '" & a varable & "';")

dbs.close