>The reason I am doing ths is to color code the text boxes and command button based on the values in the databse. For example command3 might be red because there is not value in M.some_field.

You can do the same with alias.some_field. You don't really need memvars for this.

>What is strange is that I went to the first item after the form in the properties list (text1). I did my scatter memvar there, but the very next item (text2) did NOT see the value of the memvar. It is like there is some sort of clear after the text box is initiated???

Yes, implicit - your variables are private to the method which created them, and unless they were public or at least private to the code which created the whole form, will cease to exist as soon as this method exits. So, in your case, their life ends as soon as your textbox.init exits.

But, as I said, you don't really need those memvars at all. Just replace the m. with the actual alias of the table from which you create these variables, and that's it.

Now if you don't want the direct binding of your code to the fields in the table - perhaps you want to persist them for a while, regardless of what their current values are, there are ways to do that too.