Calvin,
Just skip TO TAG clause & see what happens:

Select wpsctrans
set order to xrec
more code...

>Sorry I was not more specific. This code would have started out in another proc file (in fact many places in the program) as:
>
>code...
>Select wpsctrans
>set order to tag xrec
>more code...
>
>The line 'set order to tag xrec' was returning an error 'Variable xrec not found.'. I created the subroutine in an attempt to find out what the problem was - 1. the tag exists so it gets set by its index position in the cdx file and not by name or 2. it does not exist in the cdx file so I can create it.
>
>When I come into the proc I know that the file in question exists and it is now the selected table. Some of the code in the snippet is redundant and some of it is bad but the point is that the error is not coming at the point I expected it.
>
>At the root of the problem is, I think, that the tag xrec is an index on a field named recnum and that somehow VFP gets confused and thinks that the index expression is recno or some other reserved word. I inherited the data for this project which had originally been written in Clarion and at this point am not at liberty to change any field names.