Hey John W. Gosh! Thanks for the clear explanation. Now I have something to work with. I can't thank you enough. Your advise was very clear; based on your info I shall re-contact my "Luddite" server sysprogs, and try to motivate them to remedy the situation. Again, THANKS SO MUCH! As an afterthought I'm retorically wondering what percentage of servers out there may have the same problem with MetaStreamk files? Hmmm--tooo bad; there're such neat files!