First off, thanks for taking time to respond. I appreciate your help.

>It ain't necessary. Visual FoxPro checks for the existence of an open table. If it is open, it does the equivalent of USE...AGAIN. The alias is irrelevant.

You make it sound as if the view will automatically open these free tables. However, in all my playing around, I've always had to open the tables manually ... otherwise the view gives me the Open Tables dialog box.

>The only common problem is that the table remains open. If you want it to be open with a specific alias, just open it with that alias before you use the view.

I've tried this as well. If I create the view from the command line, I can use an alias for my free table. (I can't find a way to use an alias name if I create the view via the view designer.) However, if I close all the tables and views and re-open the free tables (without the use of alias names) and try to open the view, it once again gives me the Open Tables dialog. If I cancel out of the dialog, it tells me that the table (using it's alias because that's how it was created) was not found (even though the table was open just not using an alias name).

>Or, in the other program, open your table with USE...AGAIN, to be sure you get no error message if the table was already open.

This is what I'm trying to avoid is having to go into all my programs that are called from the first program (the one using a view) and change them. I'm hoping that I can find a way to:

1) Create a view based on free tables using alias names.
2) In my first program open those tables using alias names.
3) In my first program open the view.
4) In my other programs, add Use ... again (with no alias) on the free tables