Hi Claus,
I finally found out what was wrong, it was my fault, not Mr Birnbaum's, in the line:

lastName = Mid(userName,spacelLoc +1,strLength - spaceLoc)
^
I had one too many 'L's', upon removing it, the program runs okay.
That was why the compiler kept pointing to that line.
Anyway, yes Simon(1) is a better program than the one in the book but I suppose the author wants to keep things simple at this early stage.
Again thank you for your help
Yours
Simon