[snip] 01/01/05 SG Reviewed this 12/15/03 DSD Reviewed that 10/24/02 EWW Worked on that and tested this then stop to do something else 05/02/01 AW Did something 08/31/98 DSD Tested this 07/22/97 EWW Worked on that and did something

I need a Select statement that returns the Date for the first occurance of the 'Tested this' substring [/snip]

That is a bad way to keep a date, but try....I am not sure you can use MIN here...NOT TESTED

SELECT MIN(SUBSTRING(myField, 1, 8)) FROM myTable;