i am not 100% sure but should you not remove ' from around the variables to have (NULL, :f1, :l1 etc? prepared statements take care of escaping and quoting. http://www.php.net/manual/en/pdo.prepare.php does it help? art -- Visit me at: http://artur.ejsmont.org/blog/ -- PHP Database Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php