Geoff,
Don't create an index of this purpose. Your table should just have an index on d_key so the VFP can join customer to dealer.
You can create a view which joins these two tables and uses dealername as it's order by.
You can run a SELECT that does the join and ordering and show that in the grid.
>Yes, I realise it is not the best. But I am wanting to display data in a particular order.
>
>I have a customer table which has an optional link to a dealer table. I want to be able to order the customer table (in a grid) by the dealer name. Because of this I cannot use a one to many relationship.
>
>I can create an index on the customer with an expression of
>
>IIF(INDEXSEEK(d_key,.T.,"DEALER","D_KEY"),Dealer.name,SPACE(40))
>
>>but then I have to have the dealer table open every time I want to use the customer table (including in the form designer) While I can do this, it seems messy.