the whole point is that once you've set a field as primary index you don't have to worry about having it non-unique by any neglect you may have (eps. important in large applications and large databases) you can you can set the primary key default value to call a stored procedure that will increment it this way even if you APPEND BLANK or INSERT without refering this field you still have a new valid key the advantage of primary key is better database integrity Arnon >I see your point but I like to remain a little more control of things myself than Primary or Candidate keys want to allow. I just wanted to make sure there wasn't some other wonderful benefit to these types of indexes that I might be missing (as is true in most of the VFP commands).< g > > >Thanks for the responses and sorry about "diverting" the thread slightly.< g