>>This seems to be a bug in VFP 5, this works fine on my homecomputer with vfp 9 but at work it fails. Too bad for me . Could this be achieved w/o a left outer join (because left outer join has been introduced in VFP 5). Thanks beforehand. I have tried Edward's suggestion, but this is not workable.
>
>Do you mean my code doesn't work? What's the error message?

With not workable I meant that I get my initial problem back : the query doesn't get finished. But I have changed your suggesion somewhat and that seems to work very well:

Select * From oldtable Where str(mijbrpls)+ str(vlgnrbsv) + str(vlgnrplsvr) + str(vlgnr_mut)+ bdr_srt;
Not in (Select  str(mijbrpls)+ str(vlgnrbsv) + str(vlgnrplsvr) + str(vlgnr_mut)+ bdr_srt) From newtable)

Thanks for your help.