Ahh.. my apologies. You would definitely need to build the Query in access to use any of that VBA functionality such as instr. If the criteria for:
?SQLexec(nFileHandle,'select * from EMPLOYEE where EMPID in ("ABCO","CALPE","BEBO")','EMPINFO')
was going to be static, that still may be a solution for you.

I think Al mentioned it up the thread somewhere, but have you tried to concat that SQL into a variable, and execute that. You also may want to try different combinations of the ",',CHR(34), and CHR(39)s when you concat the string. Just a thought, I'll leave this to the big dogs. Someone definitely will be able to take the guess work out of this. Sorry i couldn't be more help...