Thanx Cindy and Cetin for the info.
Your replies help provide a solution...
The Report builders in VFP are slightly different than expected. I did, finally, get a work around the problem by creating a view properly informed and building the report based on the view with band group on shipt. Nicely, my relations held for screens, etc.

Building a report should be as easy as building a form (then again, I don't build many reports).

Ed B

>Ed,
>
>Another way to do it is to SELECT the data you want into a report cursor. That way you can order everything exactly the way you want.
>
>I've had so many fewer headaches since I stopped trying to do reports with related tables!
>
>
>>My relations break when attempting to create a report with order set to Line-Item field.
>>I have a one2many Ship Parent to ShipSub Child on ShipT field.
>>
>>How would you generate a report with that relation holding and rearrange the Child table band records in an order by line-item# ?
>>
>>I tried creating a View with the ShipSub line-item order and attempted to relate that to the Ship table === it don't like that.
>>
>>Any help is appreciated VFP3
>>Ed B