Dear BJ, As always you appear to enlighten us all with your wealth of Knowledge, thank you for a very succinct explanation about compacting files and the resulting number obtained from the compact procedure. As always I compacted my file after adding further data yesterday "would you believe it" IT compacted to zero, a first since I first installed 2014. Once again thanks for your explanation about compacting a file, and also for the explanation as to how I cannot open and show all of the extended families at once. Kind Regards, Mike.