>I am looking for an ocx or class I can add to a VFP 5 application that will allow me to encrypt files. The files are being e-mailed to clients from within the application. Currently, I am adding password protection to the files during compression, but this is a very weak level of security. Does anyone know of a reasonably priced control that provides strong file encryption ?

Sure, and it may be easier to use than you might imagine. Microsoft's CryptoAPI provides a wide range of public and private key cryptographic options, and depending on the mail client used, could be incorporated directly in the email package. It can be downloaded from Microsoft's Web page (you need to download the Crypto API SDK to do development with it.) If you're using Outlook or Outlook Express, there's no need to actually do the implementation in VFP; all that needs to be done is to have both sender and receiver get a Digital ID from a CSP Provider like Verisign (a Class 1 Digital ID costs about $10/year), exchange Digital Signatures, and then you can have all exchanges digitally signed and encrypted automatically.

Runtime support is automatically added to your system when IE 3.x or 4.x is installed, or you can add it to a system with the Setup applet included with the Crypto API SDK. If you want to play with the SDK directly, and have a copy of Visual C++, there's good surface coverage of the Crypto API in Windows 98 Developer's Handbook (Sybex, ISBN 0-7821-2124-1), including sample code on CD. There are also good examples available on MSDN.