>>the only problem is that this table could have a deleted record, very hard to use excl and pack and i want reccount() to only work with non-deleted records, is there a way to do this?
>>~M
>
>RECCOUNT() function just read the header of the DBF to see how many records that DBF has, no matter if they are deleted or not. As Naomi suggest you must COUNT the records by yourself. Just don't forget to add a TAG based on DELETED() just to make sure that everything is optimizable.

Did you want to start a new debate about DELETED() index TAG? <g> Though in VFP9 the concept is different with binary indexes. I never explored it, though...