Terry,

That information was exactly what I was looking for!! I appreciate you taking the time to help me find these resources. I have used VFP to automate Excel, but I wasn't aware that you could programmatically create a "live" VFP SQL data source for excel to use instead of just dumping the data into Excel.

This means that I can use VFP as a "real-time" query tool for Excel. I could add a toolbar to Excel that would allow the user to create a query from scratch using my VFP front-end and do any subsequent edits without ever needing to fire up my whole application interface. It's a win-win for me and my users; I control what they see and offer them the simplicity of Data Dictionaries and they get to use Excel.

I think this puts me on the road to what I want to do. I find it surprising that none of our end-user reporting tools (like FoxFire or StoneField) has added this round-trip feature to "Fire up VFP from Excel".

Thanks again,
Paul