Try the following query. SELECT CASE WHEN COUNT(File_Name)=0 THEN 1 ELSE COUNT(File_Name) END as FileName from tblname WHERE (File_Name = @File_Name1)

Joe follow Paw Jershauge's advice.. look at the inner exception

Sorry about the delayed reply - christmas / new year break over here in sunny Australia! I tried all of the things above, and get identical results when using R% as I do R_. I have found that when using R%% I do get all records, but I have since discovered this is only because the maximum length of a record is 3 characters. I get the same result if I use R%%%. However, when I use the wildcard part of the query on the Locality choice, it works as I would expect it too, and returns all results that start with, say, 'Hob', if I enter Hob%. The only difference I can think of between the two is that Locality is stored as 'NVARCHAR(50)' and Land_Use_Code as 'NCHAR(5)'. I would not have thought this would cause a problem, but I may be wrong! In the mean time I will work around it and add multiple %% signs to the parameter before the query is executed. Unfortunately I have tried to get my head around writing parametrized queries from scratch, but have not been able to find a good resource that explains it along with using it to then fill a DataGridView. Thanks for all your help though guys - has been great and I feel like I have learnt a lot!

Thanks for the reply Pete, I am fairly new to this whole thing - but am slowly getting my head around it. I'm retrieving the data via DataSet, with the text boxes bound to the dataset(however I have not bound them myself, just dragged and dropped in the designer). Currently the query I have is a simple designer one with 2 parameters for if ID = @ID1 or if ID = @ID2. Joe

Thanks again! Great article - definitely helped me understand.

Just look at: suburb LIKE '%' + @suburb1 + '%' AND suburb LIKE '%' + @suburb2 + '%' If @suburb2 is different from @suburb1, that will select exactly 0 rows because suburb is either like @suburb1 or like @suburb2 but surely not like both at the same time. Use OR instead of AND here. To differentiate between @suburb2 being set or not, use a CASE statement.

Thanks, I'll look at doing it through the stored procedure as you mentioned.