thanks neilo, yeah i was worried you would say that re merging word docs.
i have done this in past with access database and excel however the users will not all be able to do this and i dont think i will be able to set this up on every possible machine they will use.
what i was hoping was a way simlar to sugar crm or vtiger where you could upload doc templates and using the records from the database populate the letters from the web to print off?? anyone any views on this and the other query i have?
thank you all again for the support (superb!!)