Nadya,

Our messages just crossed.

>
> I was suggesting to forget about SQL for a moment and try
> to retrive the body of e-mail using seek command,
>

just implemented that, packed and reindexed the table, Also I will get the state of ANSI and EXCACT in the protocol. "Problem" is, sometimes it works, sometimes not. It's like going to the dentist with an aching tooth. As soon as You sit in the waiting room, the pain is gone.

>
> I assume, you're using this array in the function,
> which sends mails, right? Can you post relevant piece of that function?
>

Actually, if the SQL is successfull, a Message-Object as well as a SMTP-Object are instanciated. MAIL is a complete email in RFC-822 format (that is what You get when You export an Outlook-Mail to .eml file).
However if the mail only has "No body available", sending will fail. That's why I need to chatch that here.

The rest works absolutely flawlessly for about 1 1/2 years now. Up to two weeks ago I had the "MAIL" in the MAILS.DBF and never had any problems.
The Mail-Record normally changes a few times (an incomming mail is first unread / On Server. Then it's read, later marked for deletion from Server and finally moved to another folder ....)

The system is used in two different offices and we exchange data a few times a day. As all the time the BIG-data (the memo containing the actual mail) never changes, we did not want to send it from one station to the other and back everytime one single flag changes. That's why the table was split up.

>
> You need to find the root of the problem. it could be a corrupted table,
> or difference in ID & Parent_ID fields, etc.
>

The ID and parent-ID match. I can see the mail in the Pending folder, I can open it and other things. Always the same method is called. I can even open another VFP-Instance and run the query - fine.

Maybe I need to "FLUSH" somewhere. but then, if the record were in buffer, I couldn't see it from another VFP-Instance.

I'm almost sure, it's something comletely idiotic, something I will be very ashamed later

>
> BTW, the name ID is not a really good name for a field. MailID would be much better.
>

Yeah, true. ID is a reserved word. But I use it for Years now as the primary-key field in almost all my tables, and as You can guess, my businessclasses use it for default Loading, saving etc. With the newer ones I have a "PrimaryKeyField"-Property to be more flexible but it will take some time 'till this is spread everywhere.

Thanks so far for Your support in this. I'll tell You what I find out next. I'm keen to see what the "seek()" will bring up.