If exact on/off makes a difference, then it indicates that the length of the index expression differ from the length of the search string.

Also try to remove the cdx index file and recreate indexes


>It appears that it does. If I turn exact= off the seek works. OK why? BTW I padded both strings to match the fields. In other words length of the fields and strings match. But the only effect was the exact = off. I don't understand. I would have thought it was the other way around exact = on would have worked.
>
>John