Hi Ilccoo, Thanks for the suggestions, but no good. It might be the versions, Access 97 and Excel 98, but when I copy the data from the Access table to excel the symbol ( � Carriage return) actually becomes a carrige return (Alt Enter) If I run a search for the character, it will not find anything.

This is a one off thing, and I am thinking that I will get each of the users to re-enter all of the data manually anyway. I do not think that the versions that I have are up to the task or contain the functionality that I need, and have applied to the bosses that they be to upgraded to office 2000, but by then the users will have entered their contacts in to the tables correctly through the form.

Thanks for all of the helpful suggestions to all that have contributed, but I will retire from this problem and call it quits. (Making the users do the data entry makes me happy anyway, the problem has been created by them using excel and outlook incorrectly, so they should suffer for their wrong doings )

Mick