Cathy
I went through your articles, but decided, due to time constraints, to use the first solution you suggested to force x number of lines in the first check stub to establish absolute positioning. The expandable memo field was not a problem, using memlines, I just added the numnber of lines in each memo field to the lines in the stub then added the dummy lines:

linesForThisVend = 0
DO WHILE curChecks.vendCode = vendSave
   IF !EMPTY(curChecks.miscDesc) AND curChecks.ChkFormPK = 2  && Misc format
      STORE MEMLINES(miscDesc) TO linesInMemo
      linesForThisVend = linesForThisVend + linesInMemo
   ELSE 
      linesForThisVend = LinesForThisVend + 1
   ENDIF
   SKIP 1 IN curChecks
ENDDO 
recNoAfterCount = RECNO('curChecks')
FOR i = 1 TO 10 - linesForThisVend
    APPEND BLANK IN curChecks
    replace curchecks.dummyRec WITH "D"
    REPLACE curchecks.vendCode WITH vendSave
    REPLACE curchecks.vendInv WITH vendInv
NEXT i
GO recNoAfterCount IN curChecks

I need to learn more about reportListeners, but that needs to be postponed until a later date when time permits.

thanks, vince