>Thanks for the emotional support, Fabio.
>
>I ended up forcing a recalc of the field by using:
>
>

>REPLACE ALL picture WITH EVALUATE(DBGETPROP("&lcImportTable..picture","FIELD","DefaultValue"))
>

>

??? WHY THIS ???

this is sufficient

BLANK ALL FIELDS picture DEFAULT

>picture is the name of the field, and lcImportTable is the name of the table I'm appending to.
>
>It seems to do the job, but of course requires another scan of the imported records. Fortunately, the number of records is only a few thousand.
>
>>>I'm doing an APPEND from a text file to a table, and I have defined a Default Value for one of the table fields - but the field remains blank after the import.
>>>
>>>The default value includes the concatenation of other fields.
>>>
>>>I presume VFP doesn't have the other field values until the record is imported - and by that time it's too late to calculate the default value???
>>>
>>no. if true, then vfp it would produce an error because default is undef.
>>
>>It don't do this, and it is a bug for me.
>>
>>>Anyway... is there any way for me to force all those empty fields to be populated with the default value I have defined for the field?
>>>
>>
>>no.
>>
>>if it can help:
>>

>>...
>>APPEND FROM textfile.txt
>>BLANK ALL FIELDS ... DEFAULT
>>

>>
>>>TIA
>>>Michael