>Hi Bruce,
>
>>I tested last week with an index on Deleted(), but have never used COLLATE. The current setting is MACHINE. Does that affect it?
>
>VFP ignores all indexes that doesn't match the current collate setting, ie IDXCOLLATE()#SET("COLLATE"). This might cause a previously optimizable query to become unoptimizable with the result that instead of a filtered table, a physical cursor is created.
>
>>At this moment, I'm getting all filtered tables even with no index on Deleted(), and SET DELE ON, after trying several times. This morning and last week, I wasn't, as I say, it seems to be unpredictable...
>
>What version of VFP are you using? VFP 5 has a bug here. Even with SET DELETED ON and no index on DELETED(), a filtered table is returned. _TALLY contains the total number of records, while COUNT would return only the number of non-deleted records. Even SELECT COUNT(*) would return the wrong number. This bug has been fixed in VFP 6. I think there was a tip about this a long tim back in FoxPro Advisor.

I have both versions -- but you're right, I'm in 5 now where this occurred. I believe I did my testing last week in 6, when I got less filtered outputs. Also, last week I spent more time & tested more carefully, on both small and large tables...