Not sure where to put this. Sorry if its in the wrong place. I searched and got no hits so I dread my file is trashed.

I have 690,000 customers. Boss wanted them in alphabetic order. I so sorted then exported them, deleted all records, closed the file (and it say it was rebuilding blocks or something). I then imported the data back.

Now, ever since I did that, every time I close the file it says it's scanning for unused blocks. It never did this before. It is slower than before - before I put them in order. Did I hurt my database?

Try saving a compressed copy and work with that copy.

or better yet, saving a clone, and importing all the records into the clone.

Remember a clone losses global values.

I will try it when I get to work today. I just found something called File Maintenance!!! Compact! Is that what you mean? I didn't see this before. I will try this first because importing into my multi-table file seems complex. Thank you both for your replies! And wish me luck.

Linda

Compact did the trick! What a great feature to add! It's wonderful!

In FM Dev 7, the Compact command does what the "Save As Compressed Copy" command did in earlier versions, except it operates on the currently open file without having to save then rename etc.