I'm all for long shots when there's no other alternative ... jim

>A long shot? Would including the NOFILTER to the query make any difference?
>
>>Any guesses on how an alias can disappear?
>>
>>I have the following:
>>

>>      SELECT * FROM components INTO CURSOR MyComponents ;
>>         WHERE KitID==lcPartNo
>>      llIskit = 0<RECCOUNT("MyComponents")
>>

>>This is in a loop that is executed a few thousand times. On rare occasions, the second line fails with "alias not found" ... and when this occurs, ALIAS() is empty! That's right, I get a cursor with NO alias.
>>
>>Any guesses on how to get around this? (No, it's not as easy as doing RECCOUNT() -later on, having done various and sundry other things with other SELECT statements, I need to get back to this alias --)
>>
>>Thanks