Usually the actual corruption of the data is caused by a file repair tool.
Let me give you an example.
Let's say the computer crashes or someone kills the program while tables are opened.
This will sometimes cause cross-linked files. When you try and start the program
one or more tables will not open because they will not be recognized as DBF tables.
If you have an inline table repair tool, it will kick in and "fix" the table so that it can be opened
by the program. As you can see "fix" is a relative term. Although the tables can now be opened
and written too, the data may be corrupt. This is almost always the case with cross-linked files.
We use FoxFix as our tool. I have heard that Recover by Abri Technologies, has the capability
to fix the corrupt data. I haven't had the time to look at Recover, so I do not know if this is true.
Someone else may have knowledge of a program that can recover corrupt data.

hth
Mike


>What can I do about the corrupted records? Is there anything that will "fix" the file? There are so many that I can not just delete the records. Of course I can go through the backups and try to find when the corruption started. but my clients will lose many days of work. Any ideas?
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>Brenda
>
>>Brenda,
>>If the data in a free table is corrupt it will usually look like vertical lines because the font usually cannot display unprintable characters correctly. If you were to look at the tables in the development environment most likely the corrupted records will appear to be deleted. They really are not, so packing will not get rid of them. You have to deselect the deletion mark and then delete them so that pack can permanently remove them.
>
>
>>>My client called about some data show showing on the forms. I look in her free table and about every 100 records there is a corrupted record (data looks like all vertical lines.). The free table is ordered by an index so foxpro knows the true value of the data but it does not work correctly in the programs. What can I do? How do you fix a corrupted table. We take backups, but I have no idea how long the data has been bad.
>>>