Aquilla

Thank you jaclaz, the above looks very helpful and I'll take a fuller look when I'm back in the office. I do have a further question, if I may, a few people, (on here and colleagues) have mentioned that I would be able to do this more elegantly in access, my question is for a computer literate access newb how hard would it be to transfer the data to access and then create the required search function?

thanks alot for the quick reply guys, CoffeeFiend, Ive used excel for two reasons really, the first being im doing this on a works laptop, which does not come with access installed standard, I can request it but it takes a few days to actually get it, after that other intercompany users will need to use this from time to time, if they have to go to the trouble of requesting software to do so it just wont be used, the second reason being that there will be new entries to go on every few days or so and for this ive created a VBA based user form for the previously mentioned intercompany users. the amount of data will most likely never exceed 4000 lines. jaclaz, that probably would have been a good thing to mention to begin with wouldnt it Im using 2007

Ok, so first off this is my first post here, so hi everyone And now for why I joined, I'm currently trying to create a parts database for customers, Ive got about 1500 lines of data and need a graphical search function so the customer can enter a few criteria, eg description, machine type etc and it will return all matches, the data is currently in excel. I know I've not explained particularly well but please ask and I'll try to explain better. Any help at all would be greatly appreciated.