I have always relied on the fact that memo bloat does not exist in any cursor or table that is opened exclusively. This issue has made me confirm that many, many times now. I've created a table (and also a cursor) with a single memo field in it. I have then made a tight loop, replacing the contents hundreds of thousands of times with no problem. So either the memo bloat can occur if "foxpro is really busy" (which I find really hard to believe) or there is something else at work here...