Good point – no <g> I'd never come across the the {advance} field, and take my hat off to your ingenious solution! (another forum, another product … I congratulated someone on her "devious" solution for leading zeros in autonumbering, and she immediately understood this was a whole-hearted compliment) I still regard the layout you've so deftly emulated as a) obsolete; b) remarkably hard to comprehend, though …