That was it! Thanks. I had a bad experience with set deleted a long time ago and have been using the where clause to filter the deleted records out ever since. I don't even remember what the bad experience was now. My initial reaction was that the SQL select ignored it but that is probably totally wrong. Thanks for the fix and I'll remember to put it in the load method along with my set talk off etc stuff.

Old burn scars die hard even when they aren't really there.

Terry

>Hi Terry,
>
>Sorry, I should have made that clear in my original post. SET DELETED ON
>
>In a single table query you can use deleted() if you don't specify an alias or work area, but in a multi-table query you have no way of knowing in what work area or with what aliases VFP is opening the tables on which to perform the query.
>
>
>Regards,
>
>Liam
>
>
>>Interesting. How would you eliminate deleted records in the source tables from showing in the final output then?
>>
>>Terry
>>>Hi Terry,
>>>
>>>A point unrelated to your question - be careful with the use of Deleted() on multi-table queries. You may get unexpected results.
>>>
>>>Regards,
>>>
>>>Liam
>>>