Thanks Sylvain, for an excellent summary on the index thing. I'll try it.

The only thing I still wonder is that you say I don't have to reset the record source on a grid after packing a table. My experience is that the grid shows up blank on the next refresh if I pack the table. Is there some setting that I don't know about?

Some more about the context...it happens on grids that contain explicit columns (the column record source also seems to be nixed) and I do the pack via a command button on a different page (in a pageframe) than the page containing the grid. When I go back to the page containing the grid, the grid is empty. If, after the pack, I reset the control sources for all the items in the grid, it's fine.