Thanks for the reply. My apologies for not saying in the body of the message that this is SQL code which executes on the database (SQL Server, Oracle, or DB2).

Novato, huh? Did you know Tom Piper?


>I know you want a generic solution but.........
>
>does the problem field have the same name in each table? If so you might be able to piece together some older stuff using APPEND FROM. For example
>

>lnCurWA = SELECT()
>SELECT (lcBaseTable)
>COPY TO temptable
>SELECT 0
>USE temptable
>REPLACE ALL badField WITH RIGHT(badfield,2)
>USE
>SELECT (lcArchTable)
>APPEND FROM temptable
>DELETE FILE temptable.*
>SELECT (lnCurWA)