>>Given all of this, **my** view is that many (most?) expect a PACK to copy the
>>table, rebuild the indexes and 'optimize' the .FPT in ALL circumstances and
>>it should do so.
>
>Actually, Jim, you're the first person I've heard suggest that PACK should do something when there are no deleted records. Since the whole idea of PACK is to remove the deleted records, having it do nothing when there are no records to delete seems to me to be exactly the right thing.
>
>I'm not sure why PACK after you deleted that record didn't change the FPT fragmentation, but I would need to play with it a bit myself so I'd know exactly what you were seeing, and I don't have the time right now.
>
>(Update: mildly peeved about the fact that if I ever return to be an FTE at Microsoft, the headers will make this appear to be an official MS statement, instead of one person's opinion.)

Well, Garrett, I say so based on the presumption (reinforced by the documentation) that a PACK WILL give me a "better organized" (my term) set of files for the table PACKed.
I hazard that many many people expected that a PACK would PACK - i.e. copy the table, REINDEX it, and 'optimized' the FPT. I bet many "file maintenance" routines are based pricisely on this.

I don't know if this is the way it always has been, or if this was a change somewhere along the way. But it feels like it probably was a change - that it DID do its thing in the past regardless.

PS I presume that you "fixed" your mild perturbation as it doesn't look attributable to any MS connection to me.