As I thought about this one... even though it's old fashion, it seems to be an ideal settings for me. I mean it would only allow ONE USER to edit it, regardless how powerful our development tools are today. When a second user trys to edit an open record, PING "Sorry, another time." Like I said, I haven't used OLDVAL(), CURVAL(), etc, so I don't know what those really does.

Since my app is crashing (freezing) on any PC (connected to Novell 5.1 Server), it does not go wrong with the NT Server that I develop/run the app in. Someone mentioned a problem with Novell and VFP, but MS says "Should be OK either way." Anyway, since they are trying to find out, I could review your email in the meantime (they don't want to include me, I don't care anymore, I used to be a manager of a network before so I know, in return, I will let them sweat themselves out :-).

Chuck

>>Seems to my understanding that I may best off with RLOCK and UNLOCK. That way, the record is LOCKed, thus other user can KNOW it is being editing at the same moment. This will then lead me to how to UNLOCK (and SAVE?) after so many minutes, for such "lunch lock". Also, would have to find a way to REFRESH the forms others may be viewing (instead hoping they exit the form and come back again).
>
>LOCK() should usually not be necessary any more, with Visual FoxPro. I use it only in one case (to generate primary keys). In all other cases, I use optimistic buffering (sometimes row-level, sometimes table-level).