I sent through a change request to the article to use Sergey's algorithm of

alter table ... add column ...
alter table ... drop column ...

rather than pack. I like it better, you don't have to worry about losing deleted records if you want to retain them for some reason, and it works even if there are no deleted records.

I also had them add info about error 2065 to the article.

Thanks!

>>>>>FYI
>>>>>MS have start to publish MSKB articles concerning VFP 8
>>>>>
>>>>>:-)
>>>>
>>>>You mean mskb #814131 INFO: Data Reliability Enhancements in Visual FoxPro 8.0?
>>>>
>>>>Unfortunatelly, the table repare method by using PACK command will only work if thre're deleted records in the table.
>>>
>>>Yes, that's a problem. I was also surprised that error #2065, which seems to be independent of SET TABLEVALIDATE, was not mentioned. It occurs on the END TRANSACTION execution when the count/size inconsistency is detected and is actually the message saying that a PACK should be used to fix it.
>>
>>Now they'll have to add new FORCE option to the PACK command to make it always work :)
>
>Actually, after reading your reply I went and tried the VFP8 PACK command to see if they might have changed it to always re-write the table regardless. They haven't < s >.