>>>This sort of ghosthunting looks to me like you have your table twice on the path, and somehow the wrong one pops up every now and then. Check for surveyyears.dbf along your path - if my hunch is right, you got two.
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>>Good try but no cigar. There is only one file. It is a simple little lookup table with 1 field and about 20 records. I have deleted it completely and recreated it a couple of times but always with the same result. Is it possible the error is caused because another user has the database open?
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>OK, let's try this. Drop the table i.e. make sure there are no mentions of it in the dbc! (you may nead to clean it up, which means open exclusive!), then
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create table surveyyears database mydbc (the1field c(20))

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>If the table and dbc aren't in the current directory, put actual paths in this command. Relative would suffice, full won't hurt.
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>Now close the table and open it again. Modi Stru and see what does page3 say - is it part of your dbc, and are they in the same directory?
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>Then append your records, close, open, check again. If the thing happened again, when did it happen, after which step?

I think you have solved it. Thank you. The problem may have been to difference between an absolute network location \\tpdfiles\etc\etc vs a mapped drive reference z:\etc.\etc. I think the database was picking up the one and the table was picking up the other.

So Thanks much. I will let you know if I see any further problems.