Shoutbox

I think you are getting parenthesis-happy there.  I see nothing that calls for use of all those parenthesis.

code:

---

SELECT Table.ID, Table.SNAME, Table.FNAME, Table.L1
FROM table
WHERE Table.L1 Like "text**"

---

...should be perfectly fine.  If you want to add another column to the condition, you could do something like:

code:

---

SELECT Table.ID, Table.SNAME, Table.FNAME, Table.L1
FROM table
WHERE Table.L1 Like "text**" AND Table.L2 <> 2

---