um...despite the `helpful` error message, i`ve worked it out..the code i borrowed the subroutine about from only selected 1 record at a time...so when i changed my code to :

While rsTableOut.RecordCount > 0
rsTableOut.Move rsTableOut.RecordCount - 1, adBookmarkFirst
rsTableOut.Delete
Wend

it works fine! doh!

a.