Peter, this is a limitation of the of the visuall DataEnvironments I believe you may have some luck setting it to relative paths using it visually. What I do is have all my DEs in code and then I just make the DATABASE property the database name without any path and worry about setting the right path in the main program You may be able to achive similar results by hacking the SCXs Arnon > >Hi, > >I have what seems like a fairly simple question, but I find it quite puzzling. I am going live with my first VFP 5.0 application in a week. I want to keep two sets of data. Firstly, the live data which everything is set up to now, and secondly a practice database, which contains a copy of the complete database for testing purposes. Obviously I want to use the same forms and classes in both systems. Back in the Procedural days with Clipper this was easy, but it seems even though I have created a practice database all the forms are still using the data in the live database. Is there an easy way to swap back and forth between Live mode and Practice mode? > >TIA, Peter Renton