>>I forgot to mention in my last reply that the cursor changes with a private datasession only when run as a .exe program.
>
>Sounds like the original query is being fully optimised at run-time. Include the clause "NOFILTER" in the first query, or add a dummy field. That will force it to have disk presence.

That works. Though I still don't understand the reason. I'm thinking it is because a fully optimized query does not write the cursor to disk? If that is true it still doesn't explain why "use dbf('tab') again" opens the table used in the FROM clause of the query. The argument specifies 'tab' not 'bills'. It seems like it should give an alias does not exist error instead. I seems like dbf() is trying to do what is in my best interest without telling me?

Thanx,