>>Can't be done!
>>
>>Or can it?
>>
>>I'm used to creating variables in the Dos report generator relatively painlessly using cut and paste techniques to reduce the amount of retyping.
>>
>>When I try this in a vfp report, the CTRL-C command replaces the existing code with a single ascii character. Not very friendly.
>>
>
>Something is squirrelly here - I can use Ctrl-C to copy and Ctrl-V to paste with no problems in the report writer under all versions of VFP. The only thing I can think of is the keyboard compatibility mode, which I have set to Windows rather than MS-DOS, but that's the default IAC.

Maybe Harry is trying to paste in the expression builder, and you, directly in the box?