>I put in code to initially put in extra spaces at the end equating to 20% more of the initial value and it was unsuccessful. I have no idea why! I thought it would work.

Not initially. Every time. Thus the string never gets longer, because it also never gets shorter. That was the idea. For the reasons, read again David Frankenbach's message with the diagram showing the block boundaries, he explained it clearer than I can.

>I would do the ZAP and re-create except for the fact that the memo fields can be huge (sometimes 100 meg or so) and in benchmarking the "SELECT INTO ME" proved faster.
>
>I'm working on keeping a counter with the cumulative value of the length of the replacements. When it hits 20 meg or so (which it will do with every replace in the case of large records), then I will do SELECT INTO ME. This will make it so that people who are processing really small records will never have to waste their time doint the SELECT INTO ME.

OK, I see you already tried what I would have :)