>>What is the problem with indexing the memo field? You could do it like:
>>
>>index on padr(memofield, 100) tag ....
>>
>>Otherwise you may add a character field to the table and replace its value with teh value from memofield.
>>
>>>I need to change an existing memo field to a character field because the client now needs to be able to sort on that value. The size is not a problem because the longest value is about 75 characters. When I change the datatype all values in the memo field get lost. What is the best way to handle this (VFP5)?
>>>
>>>Thanks.
>
>
>Thanks Yuri. This is OK but I am having a problem using the index in an SQL SELECT. I am getting an 'ORDER BY clause is invalid.' error.

What is your SELECT statement? Anyway, you should do it like:

select memofield, padr(memofield,200) from ... order by 2