Hi Simon,

thanks for your reply.

the select statement above came from sql profiler. i tried to apply
an odbc trace on the machine via the ODBC settings (Win 2k operating
system on client) but it crashed.

the exact error message is "ODBC-Connection to 'Trips' failed"

here is the T-SQL insert statement that seems to fail:

INSERT INTO Crmcalls (clalpha, consultant, Attitude, Category,
subcategory, subcatdetails, CallDate, CallTime) VALUES ('FLQ0350','
',0,'Client Call','Enquiry','48618297','1/29/2004','1/29/2004
11:20:12')

the table DDL is
CREATE TABLE [dbo].[CRMCalls] (
[CRMCallsID] [numeric](18, 0) IDENTITY (1, 1) NOT NULL ,
[CLALPHA] [char] (7) COLLATE SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS NULL ,
[CONSULTANT] [varchar] (50) COLLATE SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS NULL
,
[ATTITUDE] [numeric](18, 0) NULL ,
[CATEGORY] [varchar] (100) COLLATE SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS NULL
,
[SUBCATEGORY] [varchar] (100) COLLATE SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS
NULL ,
[SUBCATDETAILS] [varchar] (100) COLLATE SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS
NULL ,
[CallDate] [datetime] NULL ,
[CallTime] [datetime] NULL
) ON [PRIMARY]


i have checked the sql statement and it seems to be in order

is there a limit to the number of tables that can be linked to an
access table?
do you think that the select statement is a red herring?

rgds

Edwina