Thanks, Sergey - The example I show has no field name longer than ten characters ... but that wasn't the example I tested < s >

SELECT ccompany FROM customers INTO CURSOR temp READWRITE
ALTER TABLE 'temp' ADD COLUMN url m

works fine. ( didn't want someone else to be confused by my error )

In the example I test, if I alias the field in the select statement to a 10 character name all works well.

SELECT cfirst,clast,celementary_school as celem ;
FROM ambassadors INTO CURSOR temp readwrite
ALTER TABLE 'temp' ADD COLUMN mnotes m

Handy to know.


>In VFP7 ALTER TABLE doesn't work on cursors with field names longer than 10 characters.
>
>>In the tips in the back of the Sept 2002 UT magazine :
>>
>>Sometimes, you may want to add some fields to a cursor. Assuming, you have created your cursor in READWRITE mode, you could do the following:
>>
>>ALTER TABLE 'temp' ADD COLUMN cImage c(20)
>>
>>Since this mentions readwrite I assume it refers to a cursor created with a SQL Select
>>
>>SELECT ccompany FROM cutomer INTO CURSOR temp READWRITE
>>ALTER TABLE 'temp' ADD COLUMN url m
>>
>>When I do this I get an 'Invalid operation for the cursor' message.
>>
>>I was hoping this would be a shortcut around the old dummy cursor Cartesian join trick. What am I missing?
>>
>>TIA