I use VFP6 SP5 and the clipped text was from the help file from that version. Perhaps since the docs were changed in later versions, it really was a problem that prompted revision of the help docs. It seems that there would have been a note in the help file warning not to use a-m for SQL aliases if that were the case though. I have never used single character aliases in normal usage and haven't use a-m for SQL statement aliases in years, but will search for any left over occurrences and change them just in case.