Thanks for the reply Ken. I took the premise of your first idea and simplified it. I used GENDBC to create a prg and I then copied all the DBSETPROP() lines for my table field properties into another prg and did a search and replace to replace table names with view names. I then opened my DBC exclusively and ran the program. Worked like a charm and only took a couple minutes to do. Thanks for pointing me in the right direction.

Colin

PS Personally, I think it's a major shortcoming that we even have to go through this process at all but 'ce la vie' (sp?)

>There is nothing built into VFP that would allow your views to inherit properties. You could write a program using dbgetprop() and dbsetprop() to copy them. Another approach would be to open the dbc as a table and copy the necessary sections from the properties field from your tables to your views. In any case make sure you backup your database container files first.
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>>I have several tables that have a large number of fields with the Format, InputMask and Caption properties set. I will be using parameratized local views of these tables for my form. Is there a way to have the view 'inherit' the Format, InputMask and Caption properties from the table? I don't want to have to retype them all. TIA