It has nothing to do with 'format option 3'. When you do not provide XML schema, XMLTOXCURSOR() has to guess types of the fields based on the values in them. IOW, only XML schema can carry over accurate information about original field types/sizes.

>The format option 3 has done the following:
>- an integer column containing zeros was interpreted as a logical containing .f.; when I put a two digit number into one of the last rows, it came across as n(2), again not integer. I guess if it had all zeros and then greater and greater numbers approaching the end, Fox would have some work to do adjusting the widths, column type etc.
>- datetime columns came across as c(1) (all fields blank). Then when it wasn't empty, it came as c(19) containing ttoc(value, 3).
>
>IOW, nice if all your data are strings.