> But when I tried, "select left (loc1,3) from openart_table where......" Try without the space between 'left' and '(', I mean... LEFT(loc1, 3) where loc1 is the name of the column, and 3 the characters you want to show. -- Atte, Andrés G. Montañez Técnico en Redes y Telecomunicaciones Montevideo - Uruguay -- PHP Database Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php