>Hi Caroline
>
>>That's what I read but what do you think happens if two machines do a sys(2015) at the same time?
>
>I guess that if the two machines happened to be synchronized to the exact same clock tick (which I would guess is what SYS(2015) uses) then you would get the same value.
>
>But surely you are not trying to use a generated temporary file name for anything other than the current local user?

Actually I am (sort of) I want to control various mailmerge reports so I'm naming and filing them myself (I've lernt that my users are not all able to do this themselves without causing chaos). So when a user creates a new mailmerge report I need to assign it a name and file it on the network so that other users can run it from the application without having to know where it is.

So I need to be able to generate unique names. I think that another answer in this thread (of using the computer name) may well solve my problem. Thanks for all your help.