Oh - I see. BLANK is a new one on me - much thanks!

>>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