Thank you, Barbara, that worked. I wish, though that such a thing would be documented in the SELECT - SQL entry of VFP help.

>>How do I determine if SQL considers deleted records?
>
>SET DELETED will affect SQL statements, but that command is scoped to the datasession. If you set DELETED ON in your main program, but are running your SQL command from a private datasession, you must SET DELETED ON in that datasession first.