Geoff,

You cannot pass beyond the 'exclusive' rights for permanent deletion.

Create a view of just the deleted records of a table. Before you 'append' any new records, check the view for eof(). If !EOF(), run a RECALL FOR RECNO() = nnn instead of an append - then replace field data accordingly. This will resuse records and keep tables nice and tidy... it will not pack out deleted records; but it will insure you only add new ones when there are no deleted ones to reuse.

HTH

Ric

>Hi
>
>Thanks for your reply
>
>I am having difficulty with duplicate records probably for the very reason that deleted records are not removed from the index.
>
>Does this mean that if I want to reuse a key tag that I have to :-
>
>1) look for the tag
>2) then check to see if it was deleted and
>3) if so then recall it and replace the details.
>
>Is there not a way to force removal of a deleted record without having exclusive rights???
>
>Regards
>Geoff Scott