Hi Rixon.
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>Why does publishe.prefix=this.cFilter work when publishe.prefix=this.parent.combo1.value doesn't?

It's publishe.prefix=(this.cfilter). You need the parentheses so VFP will evaluate the contents of the expession. Like David said, you could have used macro expansion in your original sql and said "publishe.prefix = &lcFilter". It's 6 of one and half a dozen of the other really. But I seem to recal that back when I was playing around with this, I needed to have the RowSource of the combo established before the When (or the GotFocus) event. So using a property of the combo made it easy...I didn't have to worry about the order of instantiation of the objects. That may be why publishe.prefix=this.parent.combo1.value didn't work.

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>Any reason I need this in the When method instead of just putting it at the beginning of the GotFocus method?

No special reason <g>. It's just my preference to do it that way.

Marcia