>I need to be able to alter field names in an existing table populated with data. It appears that ALTER TABLE ALTER COLUMN will permit you do anything except that.
>
>To be clear, I import customer data from Excel and then have to make it conform to my program's table specifications. I have been able to change field widths, change character to numeric, etc, but I need to change client A,B,C field names to Custname, Address, etc without affecting the data.
>
>Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Why not import into a temp table with Excel-compliant structure, than doing an SQL select from it with proper names, i.e.

Select client_a as custname, client_b as address ... from excel_import into curs temp
select target_table
append from (dbf("temp"))