>Even when I was doing a lot of VFP TEXTMERGE never seemed intuitive to me. Right now I'm floundering
>
>It seems that in order to get a delimited file that works well with a bulk insert to SQL ( i.e. separation with | or something like that and no quotes anywhere ) I need to use TEXTMERGE
>
>Is there a better way than to SCAN and build the line using delimited fields inside the TEXTMERGE
>
>

>
>TEXT TO lcSQL NOSHOW TEXTMERGE
>
>SCAN
>\\<<cid>>|<<name>>|<<address>>|<<balance>>
>ENDSCAN
>ENDTEXT
>
>

>
>Is there a way to get COPY TO to just create a | delimited text file with no quotes for character fields? ( man I hate the way VFP uses "delimiter" where it should be "separator")
>
>TIA
>'

Try

COPY TO 'PipeDelimitedFile.txt' DELIMITED WITH "" WITH CHARACTER '|'