Thanks stephen ..

definitely your advice helps - I'm learning every step of the way

1.) You're right I should rename "year" as it is being used as a variable .. didn't think of the VBA function at the time of naming
2.) I removed Val() and added a dot in front of cells as it is part of "With unionrange" thanks!

however I still get an error with object variable or with block column not set error as shg pointed out