>Beth,
>
>Does adding a WHERE clause and eliminating the IIF statements help? Like WHERE not empty(date_calc) and not empty(date_appr)... or if you need to evaluate both date_calc and date_appr, perhaps splitting it using the UNION clause.
>Also, do you have indexes on date_calc and/or date_appr?
>
>Regards,
>Ed

You can not add NOT EMPTY as a condition, because AFAIK EMPTY is not optimizable. You need to write

not myDateField =={} if you have an index on date.