we have 8 (not enterprise) and I have enough licences to put it on a laptop as well as our network. I cannot however persuade the laptop to take the address book (which I asume contains all the data including diaries etc) "local" so that I can refer to the addresses away from the office.

I assumed (probably wrongly) that the simple solution was to copy our network database onto the laptop then point the laptop to the address book locally (I am not worried about syncing it, just want to be able to view the data) however the laptop would not open the local directory so I created a new address book on the laptop and copied the main database to that... The laptop address book remains empty even though it is looking at the copied (very large) database.

Every other system I use says "bring local" and works why does this have to be so difficult!

I agree, it should work. Here are a few things to check out :

1) How did you "point the laptop to the Address Book locally"? I would copy the Address Book to a local folder then use File > New Address Book to name it and point it to the new folder; It should tell you it'
s found files and ask if it should use them - say yes, and it should work (I've done this successfully)

2) What happens when you just create a new Address Book locally? Can you do it and add data?

3) Have you got Pervasive running locally on the laptop?

4) Can you go into Max Admin and run the Backup/Restore utility? If so, does it help?

- R.

When copying the database files to the laptop be sure to *not* copy the ~pvsw~.loc file.