Tony,

You might get a better result by setting up your table with two 10-char Character-type fields to bring the data into.

Then you could either:

1) If your table also included, at the end, your two date-type fields

REPLACE ALL d_start WITH CTOD(mychar1),;
d_end WITH CTOD(mychar2)

2) Or, select from the first table into another, changing the data in the process:

SELECT field1, field2, CTOD(mychar1) AS d_start,;
CTOD(mychar2) AS d_end ;
FROM my_intermediate_table ;
INTO TABLE my_final_table

>I have set century on and set date to american and trying to append a text file with two fields like:
>
>01/01/200002/01/2000
>02/01/200002/02/2000
>
>into a table with 2 date fields
>d_start d (8)
>d_end d (8)
>
>and issue the command: append from temp.txt type sdf.
>
>VFP results with :
>
>rec #1
>d_start = 01/01/0020
>d_end = 01/02/2000
>
>rec #2
>
>d_start = 02/01/0020
>d_end = 02/02/2000
>
>Why is the first field turns into 0020 as year and 2000 on the second record?
>
>Help appreciated.