>I would like some advise on packing my app tables. Currently I have my app set up so that when the first user logs on to the app each day a cleanup procedure runs. Each table I want cleaned is set to exclusive, packed then Use In 0 is performed. One draw back to this is not everyone logs off every evening so there may be several days when the app does not have only one user having use of the tables. The second draw back is every once in a while two users log in at approx the same time. While the one user has the tables pulled up exclusively the other user gets an error that File access is denied. Every thing is okay after the cleanup is process. Any ideas on improving this process would be welcome?

Program your PACK once a month (or some other convenient period), at midnight. Do it in a separate procedure. Use Windows Task Scheduler to start a PRG or APP for this purpose.

To throw out users from the application, create a file with a reserved name, for instance, "maintenance.tmp". The main application checks every two minutes for the existence of this file in some folder on the network. Use a Timer for this purpose. If the file is found, call your "exit" procedure; for instance, in Visual Extend, this would be goApp.OnQuit().

HTH,

Hilmar.