All advice received - let's look at postgreSQL instead. From the links people have posted the most interesting looks like http://www.hipergate.org/ which is a 'customer relationship manager' (urgg!) It looks very powerful and developed - however it's way overkill for what I want. I wouldn't mine writing my own front end- except I can't and have trouble believing that someone else hasn't made one as a simple 'contact database' with basic functions like making labels for envelopes - I start to wonder if I might be going for overkill even talking about using a database. Maybe I should just stick to a spreadsheet? Duncan
