You can't. Just bring it back as a is including null values. For the control that you use to display the info, set the NullDisplay property to a space. You don't even need quotes around it. Just hit the space bar when in this property.

>Hi All,
>
>I'm having trouble converting a query from VFP to Oracle. A field that was a MEMO field in our VFP database. Is now a LONG type. But I can't use the NVL() function on a LONG type field in Oracle. How could I correct the following query? The field in question is PERS.notes
>
>SELECT PERS.pers_no,
> PERS.cust_no,
> PERS.last_name,
> PERS.first_name,
> PERS.gender_cd,
> PERS.addr_no,
> NVL( PERS.title, ' ' ) AS title,
> NVL( PERS.email_addr, ' ') AS email_addr,
> NVL( PERS.notes, ' ' ) AS notes,
> CUST.user_cust_no
>FROM PERS,
> CUST
>WHERE PERS.cust_no = 5504
> AND PERS.cust_no = CUST.cust_no (+)
>ORDER BY PERS.pers_no
>
>TIA
>Mike
>
>P.S. VFP6 SP5 ORACLE 8i