Hi Josh:

You're really going to think I'm a dunce, but I still have a problem. Returning the dates with nulls does work. I'm trying to append numeric and character fields, but I also need to get dates back to the Access backend. We're getting data into a commercial product from mainframe ascii files. The problem is none of the dates can be null. In other words, I've got to return three dates to three fields in the Access table (one of eight in an .mdb) as well as those numeric and character fields. I had originally tried to use a sqlconnect() and then do sqlexec() queries and "insert into's" but some numbskull named some of the fields in the Access table with spaces (e.g., "Account Number"!!!!), so that was screwing up getting data of any kind to the backend unless the particular field name in Access didn't have any spaces. So I resorted to creating a view, bringing over a subset, then trying this:

append blank
(replaces)
tableupdate()
(etc.)

It works if I don't send over any dates (null) but once I put in the date data for each of the date fields, I get a connectivity error ("insert into" failed). I've tried massaging the variable before the replace so that:

ld_date={#01/01/1999#} or
ld_date={^1999/01/01} etc.

I've read Access isn't completely SQL 92 compliant, maybe that's the problem. But I'm about to pull my hair out. I have the latest/greatest ODBC drivers I think (3.5). Lord, I hate Access.

Sorry I wasn't very clear earlier. Please bear with me Josh, and know I'm grateful for your help.

Rob