Hi, You could do something like this: SELECT 'Accounts' as department, Accounts as id FROM mytable WHERE Accounts IS NOT NULL UNION ALL SELECT 'Human Resources' as department, HR as id FROM mytable WHERE HR IS NOT NULL UNION ALL SELECT 'Support' as department, Support as id FROM mytable WHERE Support IS NOT NULL UNION ALL SELECT 'Marketing' as department, Marketing as id FROM mytable WHERE Marketing IS NOT NULL Replace "mytable" with your tablename. I know it works on Oracle and I've just tested in on MySql and that works good too. The query above returned this: department | id ----------------|---- Accounts | 23 Accounts | 19 Human Resources | 17 Support | 17 Marketing | 4 Jos -----Original Message----- From: Tristan.Pretty@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:Tristan.Pretty@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] Sent: 06 April 2005 14:52 To: php-db@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: find a value in entire table... I need to search an entire table for a value, and then report back what field it was found in... how on earth do I do that? I've a list of departments, as field names. whenever a user interacts with that Dpet, I wanna add thier id No to the appropriate field. so I'll be left with a table that looks like this: ================================ | Accounts | HR | Support | Marketing | -------------------------------------------------------- | 23 | | | | | | 17 | | | | | | 17 | | | 19 | | | | | | | | 4 | ================================ So User 17 has dealt with HR and Support, and user 23 has dealt with only Accounts. So I wanna input an user ID no, and then get told what Dpets have been accessed... I need to learn this, as I know it's simple, but I've never had to do it before! Tris.... -- PHP Database Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php -- PHP Database Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php