thanks JAson but that hasnt made any difference at all... the drop down is still showing the topmost item as the default
edit sorry just to clarify, I have tried using both the category recordset and the product recordset to do this without any success and this is the code I currently have:
<select name="ProductCategory">
<option value="<?php echo $row_Categories['CategoryID']; ?>" <?php if (!(strcmp($row_Categories['CategoryName']))) {echo "selected=\"selected\"";} ?>><?php echo $row_Categories['CategoryName']; ?></option>
</select>
and this is giving me 'wrong parameter count for strcomp ().....