I have a search function
select lname from tbl_customer where customer_id like '% 2002 %'

it works fine in access, but it errors and seems not to like the % and the like.

If i set it = then it works fine.

any ideas...

Do you need the spaces? Will this work:

like '%2002%'

spaces dont seem to matter
this is the error it throws:
No authorized routine named "LIKE" of type "FUNCTION" having compatible arguments was found.

What's the data type of CUSTOMER_ID? You can't use LIKE with non-character fields.

oh...well my customer_id is an integer that is auto generated.

Is There A Way To Do It?

As a workaround you could use "...WHERE CHAR(CUSTOMER_ID) LIKE..." or apply some arithmetics to the actual CUSTOMER_ID.