> PS: rudy, my employer will be sending you an invoice for lost productivity. heh, good one, paul well, since you posted the answer, and since i know you're a bit of an sql fan too, i might as well post the site where i saw the sql solution as i said, the generation of test data with unions and cross joins is really rather inventive, and very few people know about it http://sqlteam.com/item.asp?ItemID=10064 rudy