>No, I haven't. And I sincerely hope it will not be necessary. I am trying to keep this as simple as possible. I am not familiar with the file structures or the content of the files. I need to browse around, find things, and figure out how to get the information out that we require.

Don, do I understand correctly that you are in the development stage yet, and still figuring out details of what your trying to do?

If so, copy the files and work with copies of the files. No need to worry then about corrupting live data.

When the time comes to have your VFP app work with that data, have a parallel set of VFP tables for the dBase data (same structure) and do an APPEND FROM. This does no conversion of the dBase data. Then use the VFP tables to drive your reports or other processes.

HTH,