>Thanks guys for your help. I should have realized that was the problem. I am using two SUBSTR()'s Is there any way to tell VFP to only take the specified number of characters if it is available, and if not, just take all the characters in the field?
>
>Thanks again,
Eric,

Chcek out LEFT() and RIGHT(), SUBSTR() can be used by doing a little math in it;

lcString = "ABCDEF)
lcString1 = SUBSTR(lcString,2,LEN(lcString)-2)