The third form of the CREATE TABLE statement stores the results of any query-expression in a table and does not display the output. It is a convenient way to create temporary tables that are subsets ...

Temp tables persist until then connection closes, so you don't have to do it all in one query.<BR><BR>Alternately, try collapsing your queries and eliminate the whole idea of a temp table.

SQL Server throws a wobbly when one tries to declare/create the same-named temporary table more than once in the same procedure - I guess the query analyser assumes that all temp table creations ...