Hi Gary,

I apprecaite the response as there is very little about this on the
internet that is clearly explained!

I thought the ACE ADODB provider was meant to be for both XL2007 &
XL2010 (eg 11.0 & 14.0, 8.0 being XL2003)?

I also thought that the ACE provider was brought in to replace the JET
because of the row limitations in JET? So although JET will work quite
happily in XL2007 & XL2010 it will bomb out once it reaches 65536 rows
whereas the ACE provider should continue past this mark. Or have l got
it totally wrong?

The source data is provided by 60 or so files that are dumped from a
mainframe each month. These are in XL2003 format and need summarising
which takes them over the 65536 rows, that is why they are opened,
copied, pasted into XL2007, and hence why the workbook being queried
is open eg querying itself. It is the end users decision to use
XL2007.

l have banged on about efficiency, proper db applications etc, but
they are accountants and understand XL so that is what they want!

I am wondering whether it might be worth trying the querytable route?

Any ideas welcome

Regards

Michael