Infortunatly , dont read all the thread but i remark in your question one thing:
the strtran as used by you is case sensitive (defaut flag=0)
try the case strtran with insensitive flag (1) as below:
for vfp9:

*STRTRAN(cSearched, cExpressionSought [, cReplacement]   [, nStartOccurrence] [, nNumberOfOccurrences] [, nFlags])
*flag 1  Search is case-insensitive and replacement is performed with exact cReplacement text. 
 
cFile=STRTRAN(cFIle,cMissingText,cReplacedText,1,1,1) &&first occurence,one occurence,insentive case