[mandy9008]

i thought that the HOCH₂CH₂OH would be a protecting group for the carbonyl, thus replacing it; however, this is not working. suggestions?

[Smrt guy]

Have you tried using a drying agent (e.g. sieves)?

[stewie griffin]

This is a known reaction. Have you looked up a standard prep and followed it exactly? You should remove the water formed by use of a Dean-Stark trap (remember this mechanism has lots of equilibria involved, so the water formed can make your product go back to starting material.. thus you need to remove water). Molecular Sieves can work as Smrt guy said, but if you are doing it on a large scale I would definitely recommend running the reaction in refluxing toluene (or benzene) with a Dean-Stark (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dean-Stark_apparatus)