Peter,

>I need to add/update records in a table with certain field information from an ASCII text deliminated
>file. How do I open, access certain fields, and process records. For information, out of approximately
>30 columns in the ASCII file, I need about 5.

You will first open an intermediate table defined with fields in the order they are in the source file, at least as many as needed to cover up to the 5 you need. Or just define all 30. Then

APPEND FROM sourcefile TYPE DELIMITED

Then you can index that file if necessary and extract just the fields you need from it to update your master table.