no apologies necessary my friend...i've tested your solution and it works great...now i just have to tweak it a bit to suit my needs...thanks again and always!

okay...i went over the forum etiquette page and i hope this qualifies as a valid code sample.

IF OBJECT_ID('TempDB..#mytemp','U') IS NOT NULL

DROP...

thanks for the prompt reply...i'll get on it and post some sample data ASAP...thanks again.