Elmer --
As the user who was experiencing that problem on his NT machine is not at my location, it's not easy for me to inquire about whether his temp folder is hidden.
However, if it where hidden, then I'm not surprised that using the ALIAS works when the file has already been USEd, as VFP can use the alias to get to the file, even though using the file name directly doesn't work.
Jim
>James,
>
>I see you already have a solution that seems to work for you, but is it possible that your temp folder is a hidden directory? If so, you can copy a table to a hidden directory, use that table, yet file(), directory(), and "alter table" and some other file functions do not seem to be able to see the file in a hidden folder. At least that is the case in VFP6 SP5.
>
>Check the attributes of the temp folder. If it is a hidden folder, unhide it temporarily and retry your alter table command and it should work.
>
>HTH
Jim Nelson
Newbury Park, CA