ZAP is for sure a lot faster - but he's not able to get exclusive use of the table for some reason - so until he gets around that he's kinda stuck.

How about:
>

>SET SAFETY OFF
>SET EXCLUSIVE on
>
>USE bookings IN 0 EXCLUSIVE &&I have tried it with and without the exclusive clause. Makes no difference.
>* USE ... IN 0 is good practice but be aware the table may not be opened in the current work area
>* unless there is no table open in it already
>* In fact, even if the current work area is empty, if there is a lower-numbered one also empty
>* it will be used instead
>* After a USE .. IN 0 command, either:
>* Follow it with SELECT Bookings, or
>* Use the IN clauses in commands to make sure you're working with the correct alias (e.g. ZAP IN Bookings below)
>
>IF ISEXCLUSIVE( "Bookings" )
>  ZAP IN Bookings
>  * DELETE ALL
>  * PACK
>
>ELSE
>  MESSAGEBOX('Not opened exclusively')
>
>ENDIF
>
>SET EXCLUSIVE OFF
>SET SAFETY ON
>

As Help says, "Issuing ZAP is equivalent to issuing DELETE ALL followed by PACK, but ZAP is much faster."
>
>If the above doesn't help:
>
>- Is Bookings a table, a cursor, or a view?
>- PACK creates temporary files, so you need read/write privileges to your temp files folder ( SYS( 2023 ) ).
>- If you're running real-time antivirus scanning, you could try temporarily disabling it, or excluding the folders containing Bookings.* and your temp files
>- Where are the Bookings.* files stored? Some low-end NAS boxes don't fully or properly support NetBIOS locking mechanisms so you can get unexpected results with EXCLUSIVE use and other commands that rely on it