Hi Borislav, I tried both of your code samples and they were both about the same ( 11 seconds (which is what your original one was)) however as this view is used for reporting the users tell me this is acceptable - the result set is 41,174 records so I suppose it's not too bad, bottom line: I've learnt two different ways to join tables , thanks very much for your help
Regards,
Peter J. Kane
Pete