Hello, I'm new to programming and I am trying to modifying a program. I want make a change so that the name appears instead of the associated, stored id#. When I echo the variable for the id#, I get the number --Good so far. When I do the query with a set number (not the variable), I get the name.--Also good. However, when I try to do anything with that variable (number), it acts "dead'' as if it has no value as a number. In the thousands of ways that I have written the query I get "Error 1065 - Query was empty", "S" and " ' ' " . When I try to add the variable to 100 (for example) it comes back as 100, as if the variable equals 0. If I do an IF/ELSE with a < or > the first choice is returned. Is that possible?