>Is there a way to move data tables from one DBC to another, aleady-exisiting database without first freeing it (which I assume will lose all DBC-specific stuff like captions and long field names)? Long ago, I dumbly put one of application's tables into three different databases (each in a different folder) and would like to consolidate them. I've no problem hacking the database files if needed, but am not sure of everything I should look out for.

You can use :
copy to ... database ... with production

But IMHO safer way is :
-Get programmatic representation using home()+'tools\gendbc\gendbc'
-Edit and run code

Cetin