>>You can do a select on a memo field, but you can't use it in a 'group by' clause.
>
>The VFP9 help says:
>

The GROUP BY clause specifies one or more columns used to
> group rows returned by the query. Columns referenced in the
> SQL SELECT statement list, except for aggregate expressions,
> must be included in the GROUP BY clause. You cannot group by
> Memo, General, or Blob fields.

>
>So, I may SELECT any field, but if I am GROUPing BY, my SELECT field list may not include Memo fields? I think the help obfuscated that fact.
>
>Thanks for your time.

Unfortunately, true. Since all fields except aggregate fields must be listed in the group by if they're in the select, you have a catch 22. The best you can do is to select on a substring of the memo field (not longer than a character field can hold) and group on that. Normally, that is not an acceptable solution.