sometimes things are best left alone.... as it turns out you can put the entire nyse, amex and nasdaq(otc) into 1 folder.... thereby eliminating the moving from one folder to another issue.... and that folder will work, it just will not be in metastocks directory..... to move it into metastocks directory it has to be whittled down to 6000..... that was easily accomplished by running an exploration for average volume.... which will remove the low volume stocks that likely are not tradable anyway..... with that accomplished it didn't take long to realize i had accomplished nothing other than slow to everything down..... its similar to having just 1 phone book for the entire state when you'll never call outside your own town...... so its back to the original folders for me...... metastock was right, leave it alone.....h