>I think the problem you're running into is "memo bloat." Because it's difficult to efficiently store variable length data (in this case the memo file), VFP doesn't reuse the space in the memo field, it just tacks it on to the end. So if myfile.exe is a 1 meg file, this will create a 100 meg+ memo file:
>

>APPEND BLANK
>FOR i=1 TO 100
>  APPEND MEMO MyMemo FROM myfile.exe
>NEXT

I know all about memo bloat, I need a solution that does not rely on exclusive use.

If you change your example from Append to Replace and the data is the same size or less than the previous record, the memo data is overwritten with no memo bloat. This is what I want to achieve. How is this best achieved with an ODBC interface to the VFP data?