>Hilmar, thanks. I regret I dont know much if anything about collating sequences. For sure, I have never adding any such thing. It is connected to sorting the data? We have never had such a problem before. Could it be a table that was created locally in VFP with some different collating sequence that they are opening in our system? By a strange coincidence, right now I am in Cochabamba (until tomorrow) working at the botanic garden ... Thanks for your help, Denis

Huh? In Cochabamba? You should visit me by all means - if you have the time for it, of course. Call me at Telephone 4451238. I can visit you at Martín Cárdenas, too, if you like.

Collation sequences have to do with sorting of data, yes. The default collation sequence, "MACHINE", sorts letters as follows: A...Z...a...z...éáíóúñäöü, etc. I didn't check the exact sequence of the last letters. But the point is that lowercase comes after uppercase (which can be solved with UPPER(), and an accented letter, or a letter with an "Umlaut", comes after "Z" (which can NOT be solved with a simple and built-in function).

The "GENERAL" collation sequence solves this. Other sequences consider some special rules of the language - for instance, "SPANISH" (classical Spanish) treats "ch" as a single letter, after "c" but before "d". I found (in FoxPro 2.x) that this collation sequence doesn't work properly, and besides, modern Spanish is different anyway - so if I use collation sequences at all, I would use "GENERAL", which works for most European languages, BTW.

Regards,

Hilmar.