suppressing echo is off msg

If %%a = nothing then all you have there is "echo".

Thx leew, so how do I make it stop before it gets to where %%a is nothing

Your "DO" command should actually do something.  Are you trying to echo %%a TO %OutputFile%?

yeah, just adding lines from one file to another

then it should be DO echo %%a >> %OutputFile%

it works fine for me. I am using win XP cmd.

I tried that....it still says echo is off
Thanks

rem out that line with the FOR loop and replace it with

echo %%a

What is the output there?

sorry.  won't work.  rem it out and make a copy of it, but don't include the >> %OutputFile%.

What is the output?

No output, in case it helps I am just copying line #4, the way it works now is that it skips the first 3 lines and gets the 4th line.  Maybe instead of the for loop I could just get line#4 ?

Thanks for your patience..

Try removing the quotes from around %InputFile% in the FOR loop.  They would cause it to read that as a string instead of a variable.

here's the outputat the console

C:\Tmp\sql_check>set InputFile=MSSQLD004.txt

C:\Tmp\sql_check>set OutputFile=MSSQLD001.txt

C:\Tmp\sql_check>if exist "MSSQLD001.txt" del "MSSQLD001.txt"

C:\Tmp\sql_check>rem for /f "skip=3 delims=" %a in ('type "MSSQLD004.txt"')
 do echo %a>>MSSQLD001.txt

C:\Tmp\sql_check>for /F "skip=3 delims=" %a in ('type "MSSQLD004.txt"') do
echo %a

C:\Tmp\sql_check>rem type MSSQL.txt >> data1.txt

C:\Tmp\sql_check>