Thanks Borislav. I wasn't even aware there was a DIRECTORY() function - I'll try it. However, it doesn't explain why the code sample doesn't work. The user has rights to C:\ (for example, and whatever other locations might be specified), and the "set default to &mcDir" should either succeed or fail depending on whether the operation succeeded or failed, especially as it's in a try/catch. It should also continue with the instruction after the try/catch block, which is to set edafult back to the current folder. This doesn't happen, so yet another bug in VFP8.

Thanks again for the suggestion though.

Matt.