thanks again Al. Works very smoothly now.

re the read write - not quite there yet, are you saying this would open the query table and allow input?
INTO CURSOR Email readwrite &&& not working ---- is that what you meant??

k

>>I am getting an error read on the second line - anyone know why? tnx k
>>

>>CREATE CURSOR email (email C(40))
>>INSERT INTO Email (Email)     &&&  syntax error
>>select email from myDbf1 ;
>>UNION ;
>>SELECT email from myDBF2;
>>UNION ;
>>SELECT email from myDBF3;
>>UNION ;
>>SELECT email from myDBF4
>>

>>>
>>>UNION eliminates duplicates so the resulting cursor will have all unique emails from your 4 DBFs.
>
>There are only supposed to be 2 commands in what you've shown; there should be a semicolon at the end of the 2nd line.
>
>You don't have to create the cursor in advance - a SQL SELECT can do it for you:
>

>SELECT email from myDBF1 ;
>UNION ;
>SELECT email from myDBF2 ;
>UNION ;
>SELECT email from myDBF3 ;
>UNION ;
>SELECT email from myDBF4 ;
>INTO CURSOR Email
>* if you need a read-write cursor you can add READWRITE to the very end of the above command
>