Yep, that's what I got, too. the strange part is no opening square bracket for $FI.> I tried doing the duplicate opening of a file and got different > (strange) values for $FP and $FI. What I get is $FP=[D:\PATH\FILENAME] (in square brackets); $FI=filename] (one close square bracket at the end only).Harry Binswanger hb@xxxxxxxx