Appreciate it and will do.

I hesitate going the CTE route for one reason. I dont' know if it can form the basis of an SSRS or Excel report. Can I use a query that...

Well, your very first query/response works and I was going to go with that (apply to real life situation), but I'll make sure to look at the others too.

Thanks...

Oh for the Love of Mankind, ColdCoffee, your solution is even simpler and works really well. :Wow:

Both cadavre's and coldcoffee's are plug and play solutions, but 3 functions is simpler...

Thank vikingDBA, I printed and have up on my cubicle for reference. With all the data clean up ahead, I will take a look and see where to use. ...

OK, well look at that. Thank you Coffee!!!!:laugh:

WOW, Cadavre, I spoke too soon. Your solution is very excellent. I have not tried the one by SSCommitted using CTE....but thank you! I want to keep...

Hmm. I'm not replacing a string (can't use REPLACE), and the string I need to eliminate is of variable length (can't use SUBSTRING, alone at least).

Lynn, thanks. That's helpful. Because those values are taken from a controlled vocabulary (drop down list), I am sure that the case will always be all upper-case etc.

Will...

OK, I will. I mistook the last entry's 'Last Login' to be the timestamp of the entry itself....which is why I thought it was a recent thread.:Whistling:

I have almost the same situation with two important differences:

(1) the trailing characters, after the underscore, are of variable length from row to row and

(2) I need to trim after...

opc.three. That is appreciated advice. My boss doesn't need that level of formatting at this point either, just verifying the data is there. I was going a step ahead...

thanks, opc.three, I'll use those tags in future.

regarding query, getting there. Now I would like to see each school's teachers AND assistants grouped together in 1. (a)(b) 2.(a)(b1)(b2) ...

Thank you opc.three.

First of all, what do you use to format the DDL? I like the way you've posted it within window/scroll bar and would like to be able to...

Wow. You are correct.

:kiss: