>No, I'm afraid that made no difference. It had still only processed 32 recs out of 5647 in a minut - too slow to catch a cold. Besides, there is still the threat of a C5 near the end of the loop (which I haven't got time to wait for). What I really need is a different way of doing it, I think.
>
>Terry

Check that the WHERE statement EXACTLY matches your index expression!

SELECT ... WHERE  RTE_NO+RTE_LET+DIRECTN+STR(SEQNO,4)+STR(NUMBER,3)=something