Thanks Cetin (and Hilmar too). i understand a little of what you and Hilmar have said about the problem with forms being used with public variables. it is good to know that this is a "proper" way of returning multiple variables. i spent a lot of yesterday going back and redoing my code to use this method. once i realized that i didn't have to assign an additional variable to the properties of the object in the calling program (as mentioned in my previous post), it is much easier.

BTW, the "empty" object doesn't come from kilofox. it came from the "what's new in vfp8.0". i think kilofox only dealt with 6.0 and the 1002 things deals with 7.0. no big deal - i have learned a lot from them.

Thanks again,

Paul