to reiterate: As you said, VFP8 follows standard SQL, so all non-aggregate columns in the select list must be in the group by list, and they are not, hence the error.
in this example's group by clause, you would need to list all the columns in Detail by name, and Codes.desc

>

>SELECT Detail.*, count(*) as Total, Codes.desc;
> FROM ;
>     detail ;
>    LEFT OUTER JOIN codes ;
>   ON  Detail.bccode = Codes.code;
> GROUP BY Detail.bccode; <-- need all non-aggregate columns in the select list here
> ORDER BY Detail.bccode
>