Hi Vlad,

>>The ODER BY *must* be in the final SELECT only. Since the Help does *not* say any restrictions about TOP, I would suppoose that it *also* should be in the last select.
>
>Why in the last one?
>
The word "suppose" (misspelled though) is intended to imply that it is a guess. Since TOP is tightly related to ORDER BY, I made that connection (possibly erroneously, but that is why "suppose" is in there).

>>Oh Darn - I just also noticed that you do *not* select any fields! This is a *must do too, in *both* selects (even if you want "*" for all fields).
>
>WHY??
>
Later, I saw there was an *. Not having seen it while responding, it simply made sense to me that, especially for a UNION, where *all* SELECTS must result in identical field content with identical formats, that this would be a requirement. If you know differently, why not say so instead of just typing "WHY"??

Cheers,

Jim N

>Vlad