>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

Yup, makes sense...technically. This is legacy code I was attempting to diagnose via the Query Designer. Orignal programmer probably didn't *need* to use Detail.* (IOW coulda used Detail.bccode) but I don't wanna root through all code to be certain when the SET ENGINEBEHAVIOR 70 option exists.

If starting with new code, I'd use the (below).

Thanks Trey,
Steven-

-------------------------------------

SELECT Detail.bccode, count(*) as Total, Codes.desc;
 FROM ;
     detail ;
    LEFT OUTER JOIN codes ;
   ON  Detail.bccode = Codes.code;
 GROUP BY Detail.bccode, Codes.desc;
 ORDER BY Detail.bccode