<<I've been given a task of updating a field in a database, all occurences of this field is a search or a sort key. It has been awhile since I've had to do this kind of problem. (I also haven't heard any hullaballoo about "when are we going to get CIUpdate" in a few years, so I suppose HP finally implemented it.) What are the preconditions for CIU to work? Such as: What do I do to get it started in DBUTIL?>> :DBUTIL >>set basename/maintword CIUPDATE=ON <<Does it work from Query?>> Like a champ. <<If so, is there a special command, or does Query's "UPDATE REPLACE" command take care of it by itself.>> No special command; it just makes 'REP searchitem="newvalue";end' work instead of blow up. The DBUTIL CIUPDATE setting also has another value, "ALLOWED". This does not turn on the critical-item update capability for the database, but allows an application program to turn it on as needed using DBCONTROL. I don't think that QUERY was modified to support on-the-fly enabling of CIUPDATE, so the database has to be in the "ON" state instead of "ALLOWED" for QUERY to update search or sort items. Steve