>First, the message works fine in the designer's previewer.
>
>Second, the message started appearing ,in run, when I first put it
>together, so the structure was what it was.

Crystal Reports does not like structure changes to DBFs. Putting new fields at the end helps this.

>
>To try to figure it out, I created a dummy table (same name) with 1 field,
>removed all the old fields from the table, and adde the dummy report. Same
>problem.
>
>As far as linking, I had originally NOT linked them, because they didn't need
>to be. Table 1 is report title infomartion. Table 2 is report detail info. So
>there's no need to link.

Crystal Decisions says you'll get "unpredictable results" if you have unlinked tables in the report.

>
>I did however link them via a common key to see if that was it, and I get
>the same problemm
>
>Sidebar - The message "This field name is not known" is rediculous. That
>tells me absolutly nothing!

I agree, but I have yet to see really good error messages from any application.