>>>>>The real question here is WHY cant he not get exclusive use of the table - and this can be narrowed down pretty easily if that becomes the focus here.
>>>
>>>But if the selected worked area isn't exclusive or is empty then PACK would throw an error.
>>>
>>>Unless ON ERROR RESUME or similar is involved... or unless isexclusive()=.t.
>>
>>That is correct - but since isexclusive()=.F. for him, then all bets are off at that point - so what happens after that means nothing (yet).
>
>In his original code he was calling ISEXCLUSIVE() without an alias parameter. So if it's not the current work area that had the Bookings table open it could return the wrong value. My feeling is that's a red herring.

Yes that's possible - so first step is to make sure he can actually get exclusive use of the table. If he can and the zap/pack still fails - then its a permissions problem. It's really the only two possibilities so this should be easy to pinpoint and fix.

..something like this would assure us of which of the two it is.

ON ERROR
SET PATH TO
SET SAFETY OFF
CLOSE ALL
CLEAR ALL
CLOSE DATABASE ALL
CD myBookingsFolder
USE bookings EXCLUSIVE
? ALIAS()
? ISEXCLUSIVE()