You should remove such index alltogether and redesine your code to work w/o it.

>* Goal is to trap for the following situation
>* two files involved
>* testabc.dbf with a chr field abc of 10 spaces
>* testdef.dbf with a chr field def of 10 spaces
>* if both tables are opened at the same time
>* and an index is created on the first table of index on testabc.abc+testdef.def tag test
>* (this is a practice I would never use indexes with other tables involved)
>*
>* If table testdef is not open when you open table testabc - then an error will happen.
>* a message that "alias testdef does not exist"
>*
>* When this happens I can not get an error number for it - errhand does not even fire.
>*
>* table testabc will go ahead an open
>* I tried wrapping in try catch
>* I am dense today - on how to trap for this
>*
>*
>* goal is a way to trap for this situation and inform the user that there is an index
>* involved that includes an additional table
>*
>*
>
<snip>