>I have a situation at a client in which they are running a software system called Cougar Mountain (accounting). According to the vendor, the data files are in dBase IV. I don't want to convert any of the data over to VFP. I just want to modify the data. It seems that when you access the data directly, it creates a vfp compound index file. This is fine since it doesn't cause any problems with their software. The problem arises when you access the dbase IV files directly and it has a memo field. VFP wants to convert it over and will not use the table unless the memo file is converted over.
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According to the VFP documentation, you're supposed to be able to convert the db4 memo file to an fpt, and then convert it back to db4 by using COPY TO ... TYPE FOXPLUS. However, I've found that when I copy it back to FOXPLUS, the contents of the memo file are no longer there. It could be because my file is not 'truly' a DB4 file (the vendor to whom these files belong does weird things), but you might try it (on some test files of course) and see if it works for you. Then you don't have to do the ODBC thing.

Also, we're using the CodeBase ODBC driver (www.codebase.com) because the MS dBaseIV driver would not allow us to access the file while someone else was in it. Maybe it would work better for you?

HTH,