Thanks for all the feedback guys.

Hilmar, I'm not going to use the filter string in an SQL statement. I just need to filter the table.

Tore, if I use a cursor, the updates wouldn't be written to the table in the database but to the cursor no?

If I use INLIST(Department+Section+Unit,cDepSecUnit1,cDepSecUnit2,...) will it be better than using "$" ?

Remember that my problem is that I may have more than one department, and for each department I may have a number of sections and then for each section I may have a number of units. The thing is that I can't say which records I may need. For example, I might need the following records:

Dept A Sect 1 Unit a
Dept A Sect 1 Unit b
Dept B Sect 1 Unit a
Dept C Sect 5 Unit g

etc...

That's why I was building up the string called "cDepSecUnit" with all the combinations and then using Department+Section+Unit $ cDepSecUnit.