"How can I filter for a partial match"

Let's say you have an unbound text box called MyChoice. In the AfterUpdate event, you would nomally do something like this:

Dim crit As String
crit = "[TheField] = '" & Me!MyChoice & "'"
DoCmd.ApplyFilter , crit

and to reset that, you would use

DoCmd.ShowAllRecords.

To make that a fuzzy search, plug in the asterisks like this:

crit = "[TheField] = '" & "*" & Me!MyChoice & "*" & "'"