Brilliant, that's what it was! I won't be making that mistake again, cheers for you help!:-)

I think I have worked out the problem .. this is my original question

I have created a dataset from a stored procedure. It has a parameter of @INST as the...

How about setting the hidden property of the field to conditional based on teh value being NULL?

Rog

Something like if @level = 1 then select bla bla 1

or if @level = 2 then select bla bla 2

Rog