>Do the users know the name of the item they are searching for? My guess is they do. How else would they be able to find it in the list.

They look under various names, (soft drinks, drinks, soda, carbonated, beverages.....) That's why they don't want to make a separte query for each name.

>
>What you should do is provide a query mechanisim. Allow the user to type the first few characters of the name, and then return a list that will match the criteria. Even if the list has 1000 items, it will be much faster.
>

I do have a very good query mechanism ( I'm using VFE)

>If you ask users if they need to see all of the data... they will ALWAYS SAY YES.. However, I bet they complain about the speed. It is usually a small training issue to get folks over this. Ask them the question.. Do you want to wait a minute or so, or get a list of relevant items in a few seconds...
>

That's my new campaign :)

>Best of luck...
>
Thanks