I have installed the Hmisc package and the mdb-tools package from fink. It is in my it is installed in the /sw/bin as to fink. I have looked at the code for get.mdb and called system('mdb-tables /Users/sefick/Desktop/FTBragg_GeoDataBase_AuburnUNV.mdb') and got this message /bin/sh: mdb-tables: command not found I can run mdb-tables from the command line- why can't I run it from within R? This is probably a path issue, and I am not the brightest star in this area. thanks, -- Stephen Sefick Let's not spend our time and resources thinking about things that are so little or so large that all they really do for us is puff us up and make us feel like gods. We are mammals, and have not exhausted the annoying little problems of being mammals. -K. Mullis