I have a query doing PCHOLD FORMAT ALPHA. For the PRINT stmt fields that have reformatting (eg. EMP_I/I8L), the output file ends up showing both the unformatted and formatted versions of the field.

Is there something I can code so just the formatted version of the field(s) end up on the output file?

Add "on table set holdlist printonly" to your request. This should solve your problem.

That worked great, thanks for the info. Now I'll try to get 2 for the price of 1. What is the absolute easiest way to write date fields to a hold alpha file with slashes still included? I have the /mdyy format which produces the desired slashes when I run it as a report, but the slashes don't show up when I hold it to the alpha file.

fieldname2/A10 = EDIT(fieldname1,'99/99/9999');
I think this will work for your date formatting.

This doesn't seem to work for me, it seems that the date is stored internally in that "number of days since the beginning of time" format. Eg. 2005/03/27 comes through as 38072, with 38072 ending up being picked up by the edit command.

What is the format of the Date field?

We need to know that before making any suggestions.
Cheers.

Inside, your date is a "Smart Date", number of days elapsed since beginning of last century.
There are serveral ways to text it, but an easy one is
itemp/I8YYMD = MYDATE;
atemp/A8=EDIT(itemp);
MYNEWDATE/A10=EDIT(itemp,'9999/99/99');
or as curtis says, if your date is mdyy, then just flip things around.