If I understand what you are doing here (maybe you could post code, resultant HTML?), you could simply put the value you want in the VALUE portion fo the INPUT tag and simply display the one desired field in the drop down menu. like:

<SELECT NAME="selectName">

   <OPTION VALUE="table1fk">table1desc
   <OPTION VALUE="table1fk">table1desc
   <OPTION VALUE="table1fk">table1desc

</SELECT>
[download]

this way the user sees what you want them to and your script gets what it needs to. I guess the point is, it doesn't matter what you use as the OPTION text, it's the OPTION VALUE that gets submited when your form gets parsed. So put whatever you want in the VALUE, and just display the little you wan to display.

The other way to read this is that you want to hide the value of table1id alltogether. If this is the case, you can put another column on table2 that is unique, use that as the OPTION VALUE and that would let you get the proper row and not show the value of table1id. You can just use a sequnce or somthing that would be unique and automatic (even have a trigger populate it - note I'm from the Oracle world, your terms may vary).

hope that helps...

-- I'm a solipsist, and so is everyone else. (think about it)