Folks, I've got 14,000 first names and many of them look like the following: TOM%J JONAS ALFFRED G CARTER JR C. ROBERT These are all values for first name. You'll notice that the first has a special character, the 2nd starts with a blank space the 3rd contains 4 separate words and the 4th a first initial and last name. I thought about using the substr funtion and pulling each character 1 at a time and then sorting on each newly created character and deleting those records that have special characters (.,%, etc) and those that have missing values (this would get rid of #3). It seems like a fairly primitive approach, but I can't think of anything else to try. I would greatly appreciate any suggestions you may have. Thanks in advance for your help. Mike Michael J. Tonkovich, Ph.D. Wildlife Research Biologist ODNR, Division of Wildlife 360 E. State St. Athens, OH 45701 v(740)589.9920 f(740)589.9925 mike.tonkovich@dnr.state.oh.us