hello, i am a complete beginner and I have been having trouble getting variables taken from a form into a mySQL table. Yesterday, I only either got the variable names inserted (eg $fg), or I got a 'syntax error' message. Today I extracted the values first, but no matter what I try I still get this error message: Query failed: You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near ''test1','test2','test3','test3','test4','test5','test7','test8','test9') VALUES ' at line 1 This is an improvement, as these are the correct values (the fieldnames are also in variables). Here is the code as it is now: extract($customer); extract($labels); $sql = "INSERT INTO testing ('$firstName','$lastName','$company','$street','$city','$county','$phone','$email','$query') VALUES ('$fN','$lN','$cp','$stt','$cy','$coy','$ph','$el','$qu');"; $result = mysql_query($sql,$dbh) or die("Query failed: ".mysql_error()); $customer is the array of values, $labels is the array of fieldnames. I have tried every variation on the theme I can think of. Please can someone help?