AND

[lookup] column
is less than
stringthatIwantedToUseBeginswithorContains2 <-I used a 2 making it alphabetically greater than
and voila i have the items from the lookup column in my view that I wanted.

Waldek Mastykarz wrote a nice solution for the problem you wrote about, read his post: Extending Lookup Fields with “Add new item” option

kind regards,
Erwin

Maybe you have a solution to my challenge. We use lookup lists for forms from another list. If the record is not in the list is it possible to add it on the fly instead of having to close out, go and add the record to the lookup list and then go back to the forms list?

Thanks,

Steve