When you retrieve a cell from the table it is escaped. $quotation=mysql_result($result,$i,"quotation"); Are you then able to use the UPDATE command to mark that $quotation as the one currently in use if I had a "today" column? Would the escape part of it cause the search to fail? The $quotation that was randomly retrieved today had an ' in it. When I sent the computer to change the today column to a 1 instead of 0 the search failed. I also did some other changes --- I changed the = for the command LIKE ... Right now I don't have an auto_increment (however you spell it) on that table. I know that would be one way to get around this ... but I am learning as I go and I wanted to see if there was a particular reason why it didn't work. I did some tests and over all it is able to change the 0 in the today column to a 1; I am wondering if retrieving and then searching again as an escaped sequence is what caused it to fail this afternoon. Ron -- PHP Database Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php