>>By golly, yes, you did. I guess that because I thought, at the time, that I didn't need to worry about it, I wasn't paying enough attention. In fact, last night when I read Thomas' message, again, I didn't pay much attention. It was only this morning when I discovered that using functions or adding temporary fields to the select would wipe out the deleted flag that I knew I had a bigger problem than I thought, and I guess Thomas' message was fresher in my memory.
>>
>>Had I known then what I know now, this thread would have been a whole lot shorter after your initial message. Anyway, that appears to be the answer. I've changed my code in a number of places now, and it works beautifully.
>>
>>In fact, even if I run into a situation of joining 2 tables, then I can use the same process but it will just require one or two more steps and intermediate cursors. I tried it out in test this morning and it is still fast, even with more steps.
>>
>>Ya really gotta love this UT place.
>>
>>Thanks for everything Naomi.
>
>We're all learning here...
>
>But remember Mike's and mine caution. You can use deleted() only if you're selecting from one table. Add one more table and you're out of luck.

Nope. I tested with two tables this morning. As long as I select what I need from each with 'deleted() as ldeleted' code into intermediate tables, and then join those, it works just fine.

>And of course this would not work if you decide to convert to a different backend. Keep all this in mind.

That, of course, is a separate issue, but the way this thing got written over time by who knows how many developers, switching to a different backend would mean a complete rewrite anyway.