>2 questions. Is it dangerous to pack across the network? (everyone is instructed to be out of the app, no guarantee though).

PACK in itself may be dangerous here, there is a point during the PACK where the data does not exist on disk, only memory, and if you say the disk overflows and bombs, this may be especially a danger during a PACK.

>Must you have all your tables available when you pack, or does packing just confine itself to the current table?

PACK packs the current table. If a table cannot be opened exlusively, the PACKing routine should be able to skip it.

In any case, PACKing over the network is gonna be slower than locally, just cause VFP has to drag all the files and index threw the pipe, and perform the PACK on teh workstation. So, how can you trigger PACK to run on teh server from teh workstation? One way is have a COM server living on the server to do what you want, then you can either use IIS and ASP to call it from a browser on the workstation, or use DCOM to call it from your app.