Using _PAGETOTAL would work, but what I'm trying to tell you is that it is the wrong thing to do <s>.

When you manually force a prepass, using an ACTI WINDOW NOSHOW, you are doing what we always did *before* there was a _PAGETOTAL variable (and basically this is the behavior that _PAGETOTAL simplistically emulated when it was put into 8.0).

**Except** that we used _PAGENO, not _PAGETOTAL (which didn't exist then) to get this effect!!

And, I'm saying, this is still the correct approach. If you're going to manually force a prepass yourself, why would you want _PAGETOTAL?

(a) you have to ask the engine for it by including _PAGETOTAL somewhere in your report (and its evaluation of whether the prepass is needed can be a bit flakey with preview, you have to fiddle with it -- I know you know this).

(b) By including _PAGETOTAL in your report layout, you're now forcing a *second* prepass, done by the engine, that you no longer need.

If you're going to manually force a prepass, I'm saying, just store the result of _PAGENO into a custom var yourself after the manual prepass. Use this var in your report expressions if you want to show a page total, not _PAGETOTAL.

Does this make more sense?

>L<