>I created a 6 meg Excel file from a comma-delimited file - exported from inferior software - in order to perform data scrutiny. There are 762 fields in this Excel spreadsheet, far exceeding FoxPro's 255 field limit: hence the use of Excel instead of FoxPro. Created a table with 4 character fields and then, in the command window:
>APPEND FROM all-cath.xls ;
>FIELDS a,b,c,d ;
>TYPE xl8
>FoxPro chugs a bit, then returns the error in the title.
>
>If I trim the Excel data to 2000 records, or 1000 records, or 100 records, I get the same error, but if it is taken down to 22 records, it imports fine. Glancing over the data itse;lf shows nothing weird... any ideas?

Have you tried saving the Excel98 to Excel5 before the import , see what effect that has? I've actually had some successful loads despite that error message; other times, it dies like yours. It usually seems to mean there's some kind of Excel formatting that the vfp internal import code can't understand...is there something in a field at the 22nd record that's a different "datatype" in Excel that might cause vfp interpretation trouble?