Hi Paul,

Thank you for your comments. It is the case that the table "Patient.dbf" is opened first. It is not readonly. The second instance, opened AGAIN, is indeed opened NOUPDATE.

I would like a better understanding of what's going on here but have had to, as a workaround, just open the AGAIN NOUPDATE copy prior to the incremental search and then immediately close it.

We will test and see if opening the second instance while omitting NOUPDATE has any effect. Thanks again!

Spence