Looks right to me but w/o knowing more about your data I cannot be sure. What value is stored in the key.transfer field? Is it one of the values from staff.staff_id or it's something else? Try to change JOIN to LEFT JOIN to see which join doesn't have matches.

>hi
>thank you for your help
>however may be I got something wrong
>should the code be this below

>select distinct staff.staff_id, staff.name, staff.chi_name, ;
>		key.key, key.category, key.d_to, key.d_return , ; 
>               key.transfer, s2.name ;
>	from key ;
>		JOIN staff ON staff.staff_id=key.staff_id ;
>		JOIN staff s2 ON staff.staff_id=key.transfer ;
>	where key.category = "ACCESS" ;
>		and key.key = thisform.text2.value ;
>	order by d_to ;
>	into cursor ppp

>
>however no data it can post from this??