Yes the name is typed in but it still refuses to connect

Yes perhaps our posts crossed I can run the whole query this is inside the outer  select top 1 t.* from

Thanks for the reply
It's a bit tricky to show you the data but the result looks like this on 2005/8 but on 2014/16 the C column has numbers

Oh just to add I have tried using the Microsoft Scripting dictionary class but it is so sloooow and of course still consumes big amounts of memory

Thanks very much indeed.

I think this does exactly what I need I just need to translate back in to my code with all its many variables etc

Hi Chris

Thanks for the speedy reply

The details colmn contains data like this ....

<Record><Field Name="External Ref" From="Adams 10568" To="Adams 16108" Type="DF_ASCII"></Field></Record>
<Record><Field...