Des,

It looks like the recno in the error really was offbase here. I've long complained to MS about how unhelpful some of the error messages in VFP really are, and in most cases they could be much more precise about what's really causing the error.

The error was in "one of the members" of record 16, but then everything is a member of record 16, since it's the "Form" record.

At least now you know how to track this down should it ever happen again *s*

>Wow! you seem to know your recno()'s. Im sorry but Im not as clued in as you are. All i know is that on loading the form with aprox 12 tables I get an error message that says:
>
>Error loading file. record number 16 (or one of its members). Loading form or the data enviroment. Index tag is not found.
>
>Having already found which record gives the the index tag and the table before (ie recno()=12), I can regenerate this error by deleting the index again. checking the properties of record 16 (as stated in the error) yields :
>
>Name = "Form1"
>
>
>No mention of any table or index! Record 12 shows me the correct info:
>
>Alias = "groups"
>Order = "group"
>CursorSource = groups.dbf
>Name = "Cursor2"
>
>I know this is the record - but no mention of it, or the table, or the index in the error. If I USE GROUPS and modify the structure to recreate the index the error goes away. How was I supposed to know that it was record 12 that was the one with the problem!!!!