Brenda
To add to what David said, file corruption will cause this but it's not the only thing that will. The bars are what fox displays if their is no displayable character in the current font for the ANSI value stored at the location (you can see what the ANSI value is with the ASC() function). If it's not file corruption check user keyboards for sticking keys, its happened to me more than once that a stuck function key has filled records with bars.
>Client has found a problems in one of my tables. When I view the table in vfp there are BarCode like Bars in some fields. There are the correct number of bars in the field: i.e. a 10 position required field has 10 bars. The numeric fields display as blank, but when I tab through them they then display as 0.
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>Any Ideas?
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>Brenda
Donny Sims
Life is what happens to us while were busy making other plans.
- John Lennon