>>Why is it that all varchar fields become memo fields when issuing a COPY TO ... TYPE FOXPLUS command? and is there a way to avoid it?
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>Even older versions of Visual FoxPro don't have a "Varchar" type. What would you convert it to, without losing data? The only type that supports a variable length is a Memo or Memo(Binary).
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>If you are sure that the varchar has no more than a certain number of characters (up to 254), you can convert the field to Character type, and then do the COPY TO.
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>Update: I hadn't worked with Varchar before; I now see that like character, it has a limit of 254 characters. Pressumably, Visual FoxPro uses this default conversion for compatibility: the idea of varchar is that the expression is NOT filled out with blanks, up to the maximum field length. Memo has this property, too.

Well yes BUT, the varchar field does have a stated max field length. Why not just convert it to a character field of equal length? You would gain the padding spaces but at least it would be compatible with other older software that don't support memo fields. (GIS in this instance.)