I have an Excel spreadsheet that I have added as a linked table called "products_xls" which is the source of my data. I populate a regular table called "products" from this spreadsheet using an append query. I wrote a macro that first of all deletes all the old records from "products" and then appends all the fields from "products_xls" to it. The field names in both tables are identical. Sometimes when I run the append query I get a numeric overflow error. I go into the design view for the query and I find that there are about 10 blank field columns that have been added to the right side. I delete them, run the query and do not get the error message. However, if I open it again, the blank fields are back again, and after a couple of times the macro will eventually get the numeric overflow again. In the past I found that this was a result of me having some hidden col's in the source spreadsheet that were being treated as fields. However this time I've gone back and ensured that all the fields in the link table have matching fields in the target table and they are matched to each other in the query. So why the blank fields gewtting added to the design of the the query, and why the numeric overflow error that keeps reappearing along with them?