Wow. Thanks for your suggestion.

>>Hi Cetin,
>>
>>Many thanks for your suggestions. I need the q as such as well, my point was not just to create xml, but to send the q to excel as a side effect.
>>
>>As far as relations is concerned, I did put in the right relations, so I'm definitely going to try your suggestion.
>>
>>Kind regards,
>>
>>Marc
>
>IMHO, it is still the way to go. You can add ToList() to materialize the result and send that collection to excel, and use same collection with Linq To XML (sending to excel like this is somewhat slower but works, ultimate sending to excel is directly querying from excel (QueryTables.Add with link option) or using copyfromrecordset, again with excel automation).