I tried and have researched this puzzle but I give in. I need some professional help.. I wish to run a simple MS Access query for a list of records with an "Active" and "Closed" field. I am not the best VB guy in the world (still reading the "Dummy" book). I tried to use IIf([Enter Status]="Active","Active",Null)or IIf([Enter Status]="Closed","Closed",Null) or IIf([Enter Status]="All",Like "[a-Z*]",Null) in the select query window. I tried the "not like" etc functions, but none seem to work. I wish to show all records if the entry "All" is applied. It's probably really simple, but its making me bald... please aid. Thanks, Mark

If the field can contain STRING1 or STRING2 but either way you want the record, leave that criteria out of your query.

Sorry David, I do not understand. I wish to be able to enter data using the [ ] in the query critera: "Active" to show active records "Closed" to show closed records "All" to show all the records The active and closed IIF formula's work, but if ALL is entered the IIF true statement seems to be ignored by MS Access

This is not MS Access specific. select field from table where criteria = 'SOMETHING' If you don't want to filter based on the contents of this field, either do not include it in the where clause ( best answer ) or set the where clause to look for any matching value such as where field in ( 'STRING1', 'STRING2', 'STRING3' );

This too, is not access specific, but a common method to return all is to make the field compared to itself. Something like this in SQL where Status = case @status when 'Active' then 'Active' when 'Closed' then 'Closed' when 'All' then Status else Null end Which will