One test is worth a thousand words... run the following... do note that the AUTHOR table does NOT exist in PUBS...

USE PUBS

GO

     IF OBJECT_ID('dbo.Author') IS NOT NULL --No...

Ummm.... why don't you just store it in a variable and execute it using EXEC or sp_ExecuteSQL ???

You're missing the implied carriage returns both captured in single quotes and by the return of each line... to emphasize...

SELECT 'Hey

'+'Go'

FROM MASTER..SYSDATABASES WITH(NOLOCK)

WHERE DBID>5

Spot on, John...

It's important that it print right on the screen?  Ok.. I have to ask... what are you actually doing with this?  Hopefully you're not doing a cut and paste from...

Ok... One picture is worth a thousand words...

--===== Conditionally drop the temp table

     IF OBJECT_ID('TEMPDB..#Test') IS NOT NULL

        DROP TABLE #Test

DECLARE @Rows INT

 CREATE TABLE...

Thanks for the feedback.

Use a word processor like MS-Word to do a search and replace... the symbol for a hard return in MS-Word is "^p" without the quotes.

Sure... I'll take your survey... make it so that cookies aren't required...

THAT, Ladies and Gentlemen, is why doing it this way is so important...

DECLARE @ANull VARCHAR(8000)

    SET @ANull = NULL --was already null, just doing it here for effect...

For query 1... it seems a view of the tables would be appropriate (do be warned that there is a limit to the number of unions you can do... I...

Wouldn't that be what the invoice number is for? 

That would do it...

Perhaps if you told us the rest of the story as to why you are trying to do a DIR, we might even be able to come up with a...

Yep... you're right... forgot about all that punctuation stuff.  Thanks, Serqiy.