Well, all things considered ... it appears prudent to go the ODBC route. I would have used the "Process only copies of the data" method except for the fact that each time you create a new copy of the data files, you have to answer that question about MEMO files. Also, eventually we will want to WRITE to the original data files. So ... on to ODBC.

Now, I would appreciate some real basic step-by-step (hand-holding) instruction with this because I my experience with ODBC is very limited and basically unsuccessful.

For anyone who can help ... here is my situation: I wish to create a VFP7 program which will access DBASEIV files which reside in various subdirectories on our network drive. All of those subdirectories are under a common ROOT subdirectory.

So I guess the first step is to create some sort of ODBC connection to ....
and her comes the first problem ... to what ... the files or the ROOT subdirectory. And ... how to do that ...

When I look at the ODBC section on my computer there are options for various things you can create and I cannot make heads or tails out of that.

Any help out here ?