>This seems line an elementary question, but it's got me a bit puzzled. When the user is entering a new record, how do you check to be sure a field doesn't have a duplicate value without moving the record pointer? This also would have to take into account buffering. It seems as though I've done this before, but my head is in a bit of a muddle today and it's not coming to me.

Use good ol' SQL

* put the value into a var
nPOID = po.id

SELECT id FROM po WHERE id = nPOId INTO CURSOR cDuplicates
IF _TALLY > 0
=messagebox("Duplicate PO ID!... Flee the building!"
ENDIF