I've found with further experiments that the grid remains a challenge even when subclassed. Basically, if you *ever* programmatically change the recordsource for the grid, it resets the recordsource properties for all the grids columns. So even if you have subclassed the grid, you are locked into a single recordsource (an alias that must be defined when the grid's init fires) unless you are willing to programmatically reset the controlsources for all the columns. Passing a different alias name to the grid's INIT routine, and having that routine set RecordSource, will not work because in doing so VFP will zap all CountrolSources for the grid's columns. VFP also mucks with the Sparse property as well.