>>1. Jim, I DID use the NOFILTER clause, and had the same problem. Not surprising, since the original SELECT had a concatenated field as one of its fields.
>>
>>2. Vlad, used( dbf() ) gave FALSE, used( cursorname ) gave TRUE. The cursor was there when I used Disp Stat, but it couldn't be seen with file() or in the Explorer.
>>
>>3. Tom, this was a file I created with SELECT... to cursor..., not a VFP internal file (really don't care if those are kept in memory). If you also saw this, at least I'm not going crazy.

>Barbra
>
>Try a "where .T. " and the rest of your statement. This will turn off some feateures & you may get some better results.
>
>I think I have a Tip I wrote somewhere around here that explains it.
>
>HTH,
>Tom

Tom, I tried adding "where .t." also. No luck. I think Craig's statement that it depends on VFP, memory and file size is right, and I'll just have to assume there IS no physical file.

Thanks to everyone who helped.

Barbara