>O.K. so the code you sent me does pull up the report to preview and print but it does not sort the date descending,

Insert a BROWSE statement in place of the REPORT FORM statement, and then tweak the SELECT statement until you're getting what you want.

do you think this might have something to do with as you eluded to and maybe I should try renaming all date fields as date1?

No, I don't think that your date-order problem has anything to do with the name of the field, as Naomi has also stated. In any case, I would rename the field something meaningful like 'saledate' or 'trans_date'.

HTH,