Solution 1 sele Alias2 replace Alias2.fieldname with somevalue Solution 2 replace Alias2.fieldname with somevalue in Alias2I'm not sure about the internals. Most likely VFP does an implicit select alias2 and then the replace when the IN clause is used. It then changes the workarea back to the previous state. This would be similar to the functionality of the NEWOBJECT() function. It performs an implicit SET CLASSLIB TO before the object is created so you don't have to. It then resets the CLASSLIB path to the previous state.