>>Just to add to this, this doesn't always give you excl access, I've found (with VFP 3 and 7). Sometimes you have to:
>>- close the project,
>>- then close VFP,
>>- open VFP (without the project auto opening),
>>- then: OPEN DATABASE MYDBC EXCL
>>
>>Go figure
>
>Actually, what I've found is that CLOSE DATABLASE ALL from the command line doesn't always close the database if you have the database open from the project manager (PM). So when you issue OPEN DATABASE EXCLUSIVE, the DB is not opened exclusively. Naturally, one is not able to see the options such as "clean up database" from the database menu when the DB designer is open.

That's probably what I've been experiencing but maybe I'd always assumed that the "close data" was successful. So whereas "Open data excl" didn't seem to work it was really ignoring the command cos it was already open? So going about it as I outlined is tackling the same problem that you described :-)