yeah, CR can be frustrating that way...You have to link the tables first, and if linking isn't sufficient to get the data, you are pretty much out of luck...

There are options though:
1) my favorite, create a stored proc and have the information updated there
2) create a command object (sql) in the report that creates a table of first/last name combos and an id, then you can use the command table to link the tables that you really want
3)use a subreport (usually undesirable is it is a massive performance hit for a report like this...I think) that would pass the linking values

HTH

no can't say that I do, but the command would probably look something like this:

select t1.id, t2.first, t2.last
from table1 as t1
join table2 as t2
    on t1.somefield = t2.somefield


this will give you a list of id's and the name, then in the linking part of the report, you can link the id to one table and the names to the other table.

Hopefully there is someway to link the 2 tables.

HTH