Hi I am sorry that you find the assignment specification unclear. The clean data file that I give you shows exactly what is expected; you have both the input (dirty) and the output, so by comparing them you can see what needs to be done. Given that the lines are in the same order, that points to at least some possible errors (from the missing lines in the clean file). There may be others; ask yourself: how can a user enter the wrong thing in a particular field. For starters, an empty cell is problematic (ie the input file will look like two tabs next to each other). Cheers MichaelW