first i have to thank all of the people who have come to my aide over the past few days. i'm in awe of the knowledge you all possess. but, enough of that and on to the question. i have learned from you all how to convert one datatype to another. but, i have yet to find a way to concatenate/build a unique identifier out of combining that information into one new column within a new table with all other columns intact. i keep get a null value for the newly created column. can anyone help me with this?