>>>>>
>>>>>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

Change the UPDATE line to

UPDATE latest SET h = VAL(hn) + {^1899-12-30}

and keep the rest.