>>>Well, I put it on and ended up with a bunch of errors where I would no longer be able to do things like:
>>>
>>>

>>>Private cName As String = ""
>>>cName = Trim(toRow("Table"))
>>>

>>>
>>>As, it would give errors like:
>>>
>>>"Option Strict On disallows implicit conversions from 'Object' to 'String'."
>>
>>That's what it supposed to do. It's complaining because you are attempting to apply the Trim() function to a type that may not be a string - a source for potential exceptions. If you are sure the toRow("Table") is indeed a string then you can make the compiler relax by doing an explicit conversion. You could, in practice, still end up with the error - but it would be entirely your fault :-}
>
>Even better than an explicit cast to a string is to use the .ToString() method ... of course, I'm assuming that toRow is a DataRow. <g>

I did think of mentioning that option for this specific case but was trying to give a more general example .....