thanks dragan - i get what you did. unfortunately the offending string (sent from an iPad) sets up the hyperlink in an odd configuration
HYPERLINK "tel:23456"123456
so i would need to get rid of the from HYP...56"
that involves quotations and i am thinking this proabably won't work.
i may have to take a different route altogether and ban iPads submissions.

k

>>I am importing from a text file to a table timetemp.dbf
>>the problem is that part of the text string i am importing is hyperlink
>>example:
>>mytext string 122333 end of string. ****the 122333 is hyperlink in the original email from which it is imported.
>> the next command in programming is
>>

>>append from mytext.txt type sdf
>>replace all rinfo with ltrim(rinfo) 
>>

>>is there a way for me to remove the hyperlink status associated with the numbers.
>>I thought that text file would not carry the hyperlink tag. but apparently it does.
>
>

do while "<"$lcString
>   lcCut=strextract(lcString, "<", ">",1,4)   && or whatever the flag is to mean "include delimiters"
>   lcString=strtran(lcString, lcCut, "")
>enddo

>Here I'm assuming that the tags are opened and closed on the same line. If not, you may have to do a filetostr("mytext.txt"), remove tags, then use aLines() to get the text into an array and then loop thorough the array instead of scanning through your cursor.