>Ssems to be using Access( at least for 64 bit ) which I'm not keen on , I think I'll stick with NPOI for now - let me know if you try it - thanks again

Hmm. I saw that but didn't think it was a show stopper. However http://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/download/details.aspx?id=13255 states :

The Access Database Engine 2010 Redistributable is not intended:

To be used by a system service or server-side program where the code will run under a system account, or will deal with multiple users identities concurrently, or is highly reentrant and expects stateless behavior. Examples would include a program that is run from task scheduler when no user is logged in, or a program called from server-side web application such as ASP.NET, or a distributed component running under COM+ services.

Since I *would* be using it in ASP.NET it doesn't sound like a good fit :-{