Steve,

The space was being used to specify that it wasn't a wildcard.
The field names themselves are in a combo box.
The data that I am refering to is the value to compare to (eg citemnum = 'SERVICE')

>Allan,
>
>Of course the editbox approach may work, as suggested by others. I don't know how intuitive it is to use a space as a wildcard character, since you can't even see it after it is typed. How about using "*" or "%" after the word as the wildcard? Or a moverbox for the user to select available fields?
>
>
>>Steve,
>>
>>The data will be used to build a VFP SQL statement.
>>
>>Here is my scenario:
>>I have two item codes one is 'SERVICES' and the other is 'SERVICESUB'.
>>I would like the user to be able to enter 'SERVICES' to specify that they want to extract both items or 'SERVICES ' to just extract the first.
>>Also, I would like their input to be stored in a file so that their criteria can be subsequently edited.
>>
>>