>>What makes _TALLY un-reliable in this particular case?
>>Igor Gelin.
>
>I don't remember (maybe nothing:), it was some thread on UT recently. You can search for it.

Index ....whatever... has always left the count of records in _tally; now I've found that it works only with Set Talk On, else _tally remains 0. You better try it out - I have VFP5 without the service packs.