Dissappearing spaces when html page handles database data

Mark, it sounds like when you are displaying the data back to check and edit the data, you are not including it inside of quotes.

example:

//query to grab example data
$query="select name,salary from employee";
$result=mysql_query($query)
or die("query failed!");

printf("<input type='text' value='%s'>",mysql_result($result,0,"name"));
printf("<input type='text' value='%s'>",mysql_result($result,0,"salary"));

notice in my example the "value" argument of the "<input>" command the %s for your variable is contained within single quotes.