Wait a minute, to clear up some confusion here, whether you use SUBSTR(fld, 1,15) or LEFT(fld,15) makes no difference to the original question. The original question was, when I have a field that has spaces, it is sometimes not showing the data after the last space. This is not because you are using LEFT instead of SUBSTR. In fact Johns statement is the wrong syntax. His would give you the RIGHT n characters starting with 15. My guess is that problem was solved by making the field a couple of pixels wider and so allowed room for the maximum width of the data (in pixels in the fields font). Is this correct? If not, what REALLY fixed it?