@MickG - i see what you mean . For your code to work, the user has to type the whole word eg "Mychef". In this case what i would like is similar to what the first code i posted did, which was update the listbox after each keystroke. So in the "Mychef" example, as the user types "M", every company name with M in its name is returned, and with further keystrokes the list is filtered further. cheers