Marcus,

You really need to evaluate the average size and the length distribution histogram of the memos to see what's the optimal blocksize. You have to remember to add 8 to the length to account for the memo block headers.

>Thank you for all of your input. Regarding blocksize, SYS(2012) returns 64. What would be an optimal setting? Regardless, re-working my code to store the individual lines of text into a table and then using the table to build a variable that I can use to replace the memo field in one swoop has greatly reduced any bloating. I ran the same routing and got a 16mb file versus a 350mb file(fpt file)! Packing the memo didn't reduce the size so I think I'm good for now.