Compact an External Table?

[RonMcNatt]

I am appending data to an external linked table, in dBase IV format. My problem is that the size of the appended table is 10 to 12 times larger that the orginal dataset. The tables are quite large, ex. 172MB table when the original size was 15MB.

The tables are empty before I append them, and 1K to 2K in size.

Is there a way to compact an external dBase file through VBA, or do you have another solution for reducing the appended file size?

Any help would be greatly appreciated, this problem is kicking my butt!!

Thanks,

Ron McNatt