>Is there a way to change a file attribute? The file may not be assciated with VFP. For example the file is read only and I want a program to go out and change it to read/write.

You can use WSH

oFSO = CREATEOBJECT("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
oFile = oFSO.GetFile(lcfile) && lcfile is the name of the file
* Turn off the read-only bit
oFile.Attributes = BITAND(oFile.Attributes, 0xFE)

You can use file#9311 or win api#12727.