Why not trying this: $q = "SELECT * FROM news_items WHERE upper('headline') LIKE '%".$find."%'"; echo $q; $data = mysql_query($q); ... And try running the echoed query in phpmyadmin, etc. Cheers, Tamas -----Original Message----- From: David Green [mailto:simpill@xxxxxxxxx] Sent: Tuesday, August 09, 2011 4:14 PM To: php-general@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: Struggling with MySQL query Hi I have a simple from which uses the post method to get to my page script results.php in results.php I have $find=$_POST["find"]; //this works perfectly, echo $find gives me the search term as entered I then connect to mysql and select the db successfully. After that, I have the following: $find = strtoupper($find); $find = strip_tags($find); $find = trim($find); $data = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM news_items WHERE upper('headline') LIKE '%$find%'"); while($result = mysql_fetch_array($data)) { //etc I get no error messages, but no results to work with either. It returns a "no results" message that I put in further on in the script. A casual look at the db shows that I should be getting results. I'm pretty sure that the problem is in the query, but for the life of me I can't see the problem. Kind regards David -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php