Jim,

I've tested this on a 1.900.000 table, the difference between having or not having a tag on deleted was less than a second (88 and 89 seconds).

Did you run the query several times with no buffers open ? (after a SQL select VFP keeps an internal buffer of temp indexes which can be used the next time you execute the query)

This kind of performance difference must be tested on large tables as responce times below a few seconds are not reliable.

Walter,