A combined analytical-numerical study for the creeping flow caused by a spherical fluid or solid particle with a slip-flow surface translating in a viscous fluid along the centerline of a circular cylindrical pore is presented. To solve the axisymmetric Stokes equations for the fluid velocity field, a general solution is constructed from the superposition of the fundamental solutions in both cylindrical and spherical coordinate systems. The boundary conditions are enforced first at the pore wall by the Fourier transforms and then on the particle surface by a collocation technique. Numerical results for the hydrodynamic drag force acting on the particle are obtained with good convergence for various values of the relative viscosity or slip coefficient of the particle, the slip parameter of the pore wall, and the ratio of radii of the particle and pore. For the motion of a fluid sphere along the axis of a cylindrical pore, our drag results are in good agreement with the available solutions in the literature. As expected, the boundary-corrected drag force for all cases is a monotonic increasing function of the ratio of particle-to-pore radii, and approaches infinity in the limit. Except for the case that the cylindrical pore is hardly slip and the value of the ratio of particle-to-pore radii is close to unity, the drag force exerted on the particle increases monotonically with an increase in its relative viscosity or with a decrease in its slip coefficient for a constant ratio of radii. In a comparison for the pore shape effect on the axial translation of a slip sphere, it is found that the particle in a circular cylindrical pore in general acquires a lower hydrodynamic drag than in a spherical cavity, but this trend can be reversed for the case of highly slippery particles and pore walls. (c) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.