Gregory,

if anything else fails ...

We solved the problem the other way arround.
I create (anyway) a extra sorting key, export the original name and the key, costumer uses this to rename the files (they use some self created Excel automation) to my index and print it in this order.

Voila!

Agnes
>ah, Agnes,
>
>And I thought you picked up the files from the file system...
>
>Well - proposal
>(1) Check locally if the sorting sequence is ok, by adding a few files in a folder manually
>
>(2) if (1) is ok, then
>- create a temp folder
>- strToFile('', addbs(tmpFolder) + rtrim(TableName.FieldName) ) all names you have in the table
>
>(3) sort the folder using ("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
>
>(4) update an int in the table (the number of the file out of ("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
>
>(5) get rid of the tmp folder and its contents
>
>(6) set the index to that int field
>
>(7) grid.Refresh()
>
>(8) done