>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?

There would be a way to check/fix this via code, but it will take some detective work by you to identify the condition.

No the append blank only fixes the problem where additional characters end up added to the end of file.

One other thought is that one of the machines that is supplying the free table may be malfunctioning, but only detective work on your part can prove this. i.e. controlled upload of the free table and checking for corruption after each upload.

>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...

I have seen this before when a machine is malfunctioning, but in this case sometimes the checksums don,t show an error.

>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.

Yes you are right in saying that you can view the free table Ok, but it fails during the field transfer of the append operation and just drops the data.

Regards N Mc Donald
>Kapil.