>i don't have vfp help in front of me, but most of these commands need the memo explicitly mentioned in the statement.
>
>copy to excelsht type excel memo

Thanks for your comments. Unfortunately this is not case in this instance as the "Copy to" help topic specifically states that..

"If the file you are creating is not a database, memo fields aren't copied to the new file even if memo field names are included in the field list."