>you're right, mike. it is the source of the combobox. however, the query itself (without populating the combobox) is what is taking a long time. i mentioned the combobox to see if there would be a way, after doing a select without alltrim, to populate the combobox and trimming there (thinking that might be faster).
>
>it's a table with about 2000 records (certainly not big) but is ran over a network. nevertheless, the time difference is still 10x (both queries are run over the same network).

Hi Paul

Try the timings anyways. If you don't use NOFILTER, VFP does a SET FILTER TO. It will then have to pass through that record set to populate the combo and that may be slower. With NOFILTER that process may be faster. So the two things will combine to produce a potentially visible delay for the user. One of the two approaches will be faster overall.