Might just need an index to match the filter, under the circumstance this might speed up the filtering process without rewriting the app to use SQL cursors, Views ... there are many ways to do this right, but sometimes that is just not the possiable. I remember in the old days pre version 2 setting a filter was about the only way to seggregate a subset of data. The problem was under development working with small amounts of data most filter routienes worked fairly fast, now years later after the data has grown to many megabites it just don't work I test all apps with a larger then expected database I wrote a small program that builds a DBF of the needed size and stru and populates it with data so there are no suprizes later. <p>Steve Bowman<br><a href=mailto:steve.bowman@wayservices.com>steve.bowman@wayservices.com</a><br><a href= > </a><br>