>Okay, I know there is a trick to this.
>
>I am writing a program that will iterate a VFP database and create pipe separated text files with no quotes and the data appropriate massaged for the SQL tables that will bulk upload them.
>
>I have some memo fields.
>
>I can do something clumsy that initailly puts a blank character in the column that will go to the SQL varchar(max) and then dummy up something to suck data in ( I do NOT want to use any kind of OLE or OLEDB to connect ot VFP if I can get around it. )
>
>Does anybody have tricky magic??

Check this message #1563037 although I think your approach should work (I used a similar idea moving from Excel to VFP). I took first 254 characters and only when memo was longer (few rows) made the update as a separate process.