>>>>
>>>>I don't know if you can do that with with Excel automation, but if you are importing latest.xls into VFP, that is, as a table, just recreate the column value as a date.
>>>>
>>>>

>>>>ALTER TABLE latest RENAME COLUMN h TO hn
>>>>ALTER TABLE latest ADD COLUMN h D
>>>>UPDATE latest SET h = hn + {^1899-12-30}
>>>>ALTER TABLE latest DROP COLUMN hn
>>>>

>>>
>>>
>>>My code is now ALTER TABLE latest RENAME COLUMN h TO hn
>>>ALTER TABLE latest ADD COLUMN h D
>>>UPDATE latest SET h = hn + {^1899-12-30}
>>>ALTER TABLE latest DROP COLUMN hn
>>>cancel
>>
>>
>>Sorry I sent the last post too early - it errors on the update line with operator / operand type mismatch
>
>Can you put here the result of DISPLAY STRUCTURE of the latest table?

Hn is 13 character fields with 42667

H is an empty date field

Sorry I dont know how to put the whole structure but these are the only 2 fields we are dealing with

Thanks for all your help so far

Colin