Use a drop down menu instead of pop-out record picker

No. I don't want the record picker.. I want the drop down. 

Thanks.

A solution is this is to set up a Conditional Drop down and have the user first select a letter of the alphabet or a range of letters like A-K and L-Z.

Then he dropdown for the choices will be less than 1,000.

So you would have a multiple choice filter, say 26 choices form a to Z.

The make a calculated field on the main data field to calculate that same value, ie the first letter.

Then make the drop down be conditional on having first selected the letter of the alphabet.

Yes but this is field for entering part numbers. All values start with a 'P'. So it is a lot faster to type 'p1001' than the name of the product.

If they all start with P, then have the user first select from 0-9 (or P), P1, P2  etcc) and then  only show those ones, so only 10 th of the total records will be less than 1,000 records.

I understand what you are saying about adding an extra filter field ... but people have been using this the same way for years - they are acting like I broke the app :-(

the alternative is to filter off the report for part numbers which are inactive.

I have a follow up question to this.  I have a list of over 1,000 (list of EE numbers) and don't want to do categories as suggested above.  Can you have the user type in their EE number instead of having the record picker or drop down?

One solution is to allow both methods.
You can make a data entry field called [EE number direct entry].

Then you already probably have [Related Employee number or whatever the current relationship reference field is called.

Then have a formula called [Employee # (final)] field like 

IF([EE number direct entry]>0. ,[EE number direct entry], related employee number])

Then make a 2nd relationship to the Employees table and get any lookup fields only from that 2nd relationship.