The UnderlyingValue property on a Field object indicates the Field object's current value in the database. This property returns a Variant.
actualValue = currentfield.UnderlyingValue
The UnderlyingValue property is used to return the current field value from the database. The field value in the UnderlyingValue property is the value that is visible to your transaction and may be the result of a recent update by another transaction. This may differ from the OriginalValue property, which reflects the value that was originally returned to the Recordset.
This is similar to the affect of calling the Resync method, however the UnderlyingValue property returns only the value for a specific field from the current record. This is the same value that the Resync method uses to replace the Value property.
When this property is used with the OriginalValue property, you can resolve conflicts that arise from batch updates.