I receive a file every morning with addresses. the state is written out, not in the state postal abbreviations. i am looking for a macro to change the state from "Virginia" to "VA". any suggestions?

Create an update query for each statename you wish to shorten, and then run each query through a macro called say ShortState.

thanks! that makes sense, but i was hoping to get a quicker way, in 1 macro. but this will work.

If you create a "conversion" table with two columns, the state name and abbreviation, you don't need to update anything. Just join to this table on state name to obtain the abbreviation any time you need it.