I have removed the initial character in previous attempts also I created a list of all customer id's is sequence, the problem this caused was that as customer A000102 could come through 3 time in a row each on a seperate record and not all customer id's come through each day they come through bit a time each day, so the records I am trying to compare is from the first record in the db to the last one received on each daily update.
I could get ten records one day and 200 the next. so the table to compare the records too flags up loads of errors.
As an Example the records in the db run from say A000503 and ever day new records are added and I was trying to find a way to highlight records that are missing from the sequence as each new recorded added should be either the same as the previous or 1 number higher than the previous.
I dont know enough about access to get my excel module to work in access. I dont even know if it is possible.
I hope im not too confusing, I started to loose myself then.
Thank you again for your quick reply