I believe you are confusing dBASE II with dBASE III. Big difference. dBASE II had no memo fields. However, I do believe that VFP should be able to read them and it looks like someone did something with these files that trashed the headers. So... Off I go with low level file reading.

By the way, I still have my original 8 inch CPM dBASE II floppy around here somewhere from 1983 I believe. It's how I got started in this business.

Thanks everyone for the input.
John

>VFP will read these files without any problems. If memo fields are involved, VFP will convert them, I seem to remember that it's the same for mdx files (dBase version of cdx index files) . In other words, most likely you won't be able to use the files from dBase afterwards.
>
>>Hi folks,
>>I can't believe someone just gave me a set of dBASE II tables. I don't have anything that will read them anymore. Can anyone point me to something that will? Even if I can just export to text would be a start. I know I could write a prg using fopen and fread and decipher the headers then read them but that would take more time than the job is paying.
>>
>>Thanks,
>>John.