Thanks so much for all your help ! Much appreciated, I hope I am not being too much of a pain... but... I was unable to detect the name of the optional field I had origionally created. I followed your clear instructions by locating the sub folder "TYPE" for CSOPTFH, CSOPTFD, ICOFD,tables but could not see the titles for the new optional fields i need to edit. I used SQL Studio for MSSQL. OR where in the "Type" folder do i change the 1 to a 6 bearing in mind i need the field to accept both numeric and alphabet strings. thanks again, sorry for the confusion..