While this does not relate to surnames directly, I have been trying to get my information together so that I can link either people or dates or locations together. I have ran across this ability quite by accident but would like to share this with each of you in case you have these products or similar products. In Family Tree Maker, you have the ability to create a self defined report which can include any field(s) of your family tree program. Set this report to the fields that you would like to create a separate database that cannot be accomplished through FTM. Once you have your report, go the Edit menu option and select Copy Report. Go to a plain text editor and either Ctrl-V or Edit-Paste. This creates a tab delimited text file. Edit out the word Report and modify the headings to meet your needs. When you exit and save this file, bring up Access or Excel and import the file with the first line as headings. Bingo, you now have your information where you can slice and dice them to your hearts content. If later you need to update your information, just have it copy over the Excel file or import the information and overwrite the table that was originally created. You can use this to isolate either families or locations or dates or all three. You set the fields and the criteria to be used. Hope this helps someone. Harvey