>>>> >>>>Larry- I think what you are trying to do can be accomplished with one >statement: >>>> >>>>SELECT count(*), distinct *; >>>>FROM masterfile; >>>>INTO CURSOR countfile; >>>>WHERE inactive <> "Y"; >>>>GROUP BY agegrp, district >>>> >>>>This doesn't directly apply to your question, but could possibly reduce >the time it takes to create your countfile table. >>>>HTH >>> >Yes, I left out a few words... > >What if I want to group agegrp's into categories (Under_50 and Over_50) and >get totals by category (assume that agegrp contains the actual age in >years)???? Then you should just run another select on the resulting cursor from the first select, like this SELECT count(*) as cnt, *; FROM masterfile; INTO CURSOR countfile; WHERE inactive <> "Y"; GROUP BY agegrp, district; into cursor first select agegrp>50 as over_50, sum(cnt) as cnt, district; from first; group by district, over_50; into curs second This way you'll have .t. or .f. in the over_50 column, and sum of appropriate counts, without the need to run the whole select on the big table again. Another approach could be select district, sum(iif(agegrp>50,cnt, 0) as over_50, sum(iif(agegrp<=50,cnt, 0) as under_50, ; from first; group by district; into curs second ....which would give you one record per district, in a form more suitable for reporting.