Thanks for the time taken in your reply. By the sound of things I guess I would be better off, in terms of simplicity and cost, keeping the VFP app and tables and merely, for reasons of speed, keeping the exe on the local machines and having it access VFP tables on the central server. I'm starting this project in about 4 weeks so will let you know how things go......which actually means that if I have any unsolveable problems I may come back to you again!!!