Bob,

I was trying to spare some of the finer details to simplify the problem
- but I can see that by doing this i've just made it more confusing, so
i'll explain exactly what i'm trying to do and hopefully it will put
this in context.

Thank you for getting me this far i'm miles ahead of where I would have
been had you not been kind enough to offer your expert assistence in
the first place.

....
I am using a CRM package called ACT. I am trying to get existing data
(written in a custom database) from the custom database into ACT. ACT
accepts comma delimitted text files by way of import, and so this is
the method I am using to import data from the bespoke database into
ACT.

The bespoke database has two main tables. Customers and Orders. I have
contructed a query using the wizard and told it that I want information
from the customers table and the orders table. It returns the data -
however it produces a new row for every order that the customer has
placed. The result is one large file with each row representing an
individual order. For this reason each row has many bits of duplicated
customer data. For example, name, address, telephone number etc...
appear on every row - even if ninety consecutive rows are the same
customer.

Now what i'm trying to do is get this data imported into Act. But Act
treats every row as a unique contact and so I need to make sure that
every company only has one row associated with it in this file. This is
what i'm trying to achieve by using Excel.

I had thought that if i removed all the generic columns - like customer
name, address etc... and just kept the key column (ID - which is column
A), and those columns which contain unique order information, then
perhaps it would fit. But that's not the case. Taking the frequent
customer that has placed 90 orders as an example - even after having
removed the generic columns from the spreadsheet i'm still left with 14
columns which contain unique order data. A simple calculation 14*90
proves that this data isn't all going to fit into one row, as i've now
learnt - excel has a limit of 250 columns.

So I have a dilemma the code you kindly gave me works fine. So I am
tantalisingly close. But I don't have enough columns!

If you need any further information please ask - I look forward to
hearing your thoughts on this problem.

Many Thanks,

Gary.