you're right, mike. it is the source of the combobox. however, the query itself (without populating the combobox) is what is taking a long time. i mentioned the combobox to see if there would be a way, after doing a select without alltrim, to populate the combobox and trimming there (thinking that might be faster).

it's a table with about 2000 records (certainly not big) but is ran over a network. nevertheless, the time difference is still 10x (both queries are run over the same network).

paul