My query needs work

Winston2, first, I would advocate always trimming your field values on their way in, or somehow excluding this blanks and spaces in your date fields.  It's always beneficial to make sure your database's integrity is in check, rather than bandaid a problem, because those will typically come back and bite you in the butt later (for example, when you want to perform some kind of date function on these date fields that are allowing spaces in them).

Having said that, here's what you can do if that's not an option:

<cfquery name="CompletionsCount" datasource="#application.DSN#" dbtype="ODBC">
     SELECT    CompletionDate
     FROM   RawData
     WHERE    Status = 'Active'
     <cfinclude template="dsp_ListOfExcludedEmps.cfm">
     AND    CompletionDate is not null

     AND Len( Trim( CompletionDate ) ) > 0
</cfquery>

Basically, with that last "AND" clause, you're trimming your CompletionDate fields of extra spaces, and then comparing the resulting length of the field.  If it thereafter doesn't have any characters in it, you'll exclude that row / record from your query.  If after the trim function, the field still has characters (i.e, dates), then you're including it in your query.

Again, though, this is a bandaid, and I would recommend correcting the data if you are able to! 

I have imported an excel spreadsheet into access ...

it has a date in it or it is empty.

I do not know what import process you used, or the data type of the "CompletionDate" column. But before you can figure out what type of comparison to use, you need to look at the data. How did your import process handled those "empty" values? ie What value were they converted into?

What is the final SQL statement that is being passed to the DB which is - I'm guessing - erroring?

And what's the actual error?

--

Adam