Walter,

Kevin's example *IS* using parameters, which is the reason for bending it into the way he did.

Yeah, I guess I've misconstrued the effect of the Coalesce... I had assumed that with this:

WHERE LastName LIKE  '%'  +  COALESCE(@LastName,LastName)+  '%'  AND
            FirstName LIKE '%' + COALESCE(@FirstName,FirstName) + '%' AND
            Address LIKE '%' + COALESCE(@Address,Address) + '%' AND
            City LIKE '%' + COALESCE(@City,City) + '%' AND
            State LIKE '%' + COALESCE(@State,State) + '%' AND
            Zip LIKE '%' + COALESCE(@Zip,Zip) + '%' ),

If I entered 1% or 0=0 or Zip LIKE % in the Zip textbox on the displayed form, I could alter the intended behavior of the SQL. IOW I thought the coalesces were run just once, concatenating parameters' values into the SQL rather than being run on every row. I guess I need to slow down and check more carefully!