Hi,
Thanks for the quick response, to take your questions one by one
a) Unfortunately I am supporting offshore and can't really say if the incoming tables are bad. Is there a way that I can check this via code? Will your earlier solution of append blank followed by delete and pack, fix bad incoming tables?
b) You are correct in assuming that the files come in ZIPped up. Is the unzip culprit? Hmm, I never thought of that, but I can address that issue by checking CRCs or some such thing post unzip. Thanks for that, it always amazes how we take some things for granted...
c) I am a bit confused about your suggestion of control characters in fields, if this was the case then wouldn't VFP also have a problem showing field contents in BROWSE. I am pretty sure that when viewed externally the incoming DBFs show data correctly.
Kapil.