Is there a workaround for this limitation? Would appreciate any help/suggestions/ideas -- custom publishing is last resort for this database. Thanks all.

The defaening silence is because the answer is probably "use custom web publishing".

I have developed an extensive project management database which produces a conditional list for IWP. Each step requires a 'set' which is used to establish the condition of the list. The web requires some way of knowing what your initial selection is, therefor my 'set' updates the initial value list and causes the other values lists to be conditional.

Cheers.