this is why i asked the question. i have a 'desktop' that gives a 5 day working subset of the main data file. the relevant data is stored in a smaller file. as the items are worked on and completed, the main file is updated and the records in the sub file are deleted. the sub file is updated every minute with new data from the main file as new records are added and i do a check to see if there is 'x' amount of deleted records before packing the file. i wanted the fastest way to check how many deleted records there were before deciding on a pack.