>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"??

Well, there's no such requirement. Fortunately! :) But you were so sure about it, that I had to ask why. :)

Vlad