Tom,

No errors other than the query taking a long time, which you spoke to. The
join sounds like what i should have tried in the beginning due to the data
size, but was hoping magic would happen. Ha!

Thanks.

Tom van Stiphout wrote:
Are you getting any errors?
I could see that this is slow,because you are creating a carthesian
product by selecting tbl_2, tbl1. That produces 14000 * 45000 results,
which you then join using a wildcard on both sides. Yes, that may take
a while...
If the serial number in tbl_2 is in a predictable location or has a
predictable format it may be better to pull it out first (e.g.
Mid$(Descriptor, 5, 6), store it in a temporary field, and then inner
join the two serialno fields.

-Tom.
Microsoft Access MVP

This is probably pretty rudimentary but I'm doing an Update Query in 2007 and
I am having an issue with my criteria.
[quoted text clipped - 16 lines]
do the match (200 rows against 14,000). Any ideas. This really should be
jumping out at me but it is not. Thanks.