Thanks, everyone, for pointing out my SQL syntax errors - while working on it myself last night, I realised the problem with the table name and lack of single quotes for the variables, but it's good to get confirmation.

As for the suggestions re the DBI module, I did consider that, but since I'm such a newbie, I thought Win32::ODBC looked "easier". I should have a look at it again in the light of this very good learning experience.

Thanks especially tcf22 for the excellent error-checking code. I very stupidly didn't specify a username/password for the connection, so that was where it was failing - the error report pointed that out very clearly!