Tony,

>The first time I tried to use RECCOUNT() to operate in another area using table alias I spent a lot of time till I understand this. The VFP Help does not 'Help' in this situation because it does not make a note on this.

The key to understanding Help on items like this is to note the syntax provided at the top of the help entry:

RECCOUNT([nWorkArea | cTableAlias])

The "c" in cTableAlias indicates that a character-type parameter is expected, which can be either a string literal enclosed in quotes or the name of a variable (not in quotes) that contains the aliasname as a character string. (Or you can choose the nWorkArea option instead and provide a numeric work area number or variable that contains that info -- the "|" character means either nWorkArea or cTableAlias will work and the "[" square brackets around both options indicate that they are optional, in which case the function works on the currently-selected work area.)

The USE command, however, shows Table as the first parameter (not cTable) so it expects the name of a table without surrounding quotes.