>I'd like to be able to alter the properties of a free table I'm creating programatically. I want to hide it and make it read only. I also want to be able to change the read only attribute when I want to append records to it and them change it back again after appending. Can anyone suggest a way of simple doing this please.

In addition to Hilmars response :

run "attrib +h MyTable.dbf"

to hide the file

run "attrib -h MyTable.dbf"

to make the file visible

run "attrib -r MyTable.dbf"

to make the file writable

File must be visible for setting/resetting read-only attribute.
Also, if there are spaces in the pathname for the file, use quotes.