Hello... I'm a student who's only taken some basic coding classes. My project might be a bit ambitious for my skills, but I'm getting stuck on one small issue.

I built an Access database for our personal library.
I'm building a small application that will:
1. Display all records of books.
2. Allow searching for a book, ISBN, etc.

The search function is where I'm getting hung up. I can view all the records in the database, edit them, scroll through them, etc.

What steps do I need to take to be able to search the database?

What I've done is a drop-down (not databound) with the "search by..." option, and a text box that the user puts in the term they want to search for. I use the search index to set the title of the column I want to search, and the text.tostring to search those columns for a record, and display it on the main form, using public static variables.

Other tutorials I've seen have said to use the Jet OLEDB object, or to drag the database to the form and use a wizard. The problem is that I can't FIND the Jet object, and am not able to drag the database to the form.

What I need help with is:
How do i send a query to the database? (The "Add Query" button is greyed out)?
How do I parse the data from each column to the appropriate fields?

Thank you for the help!

A little more info.

I know why the "add query" button is greyed out... it's not connected to a database.
I have the database built, what I need to know is how to connect to the database itself.

If anyone could provide some source code, it would be greatly appreciated.

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