Hi, thanks for your help on this.

Your code didnt quite work as expected (select returned 0 rows), but as mentioned I'd already tried that to give exactly the same error. (Thanks for the heads up re this being depracted in 2012 tho!).

I did find that setting ANSI WARNINGS OFF allows it to work...although not a good thing to do. I've also tried running it by selecting LEFT(tablename,4) and the insert works fine usnig this, so will go with that option for now.

I just can't find anything telling me why it's doing it though, so hope I don't get any further issues with other code being run !?!?

Thanks again