Hi Barbara! I am new to VFP and I used to work with another programming environment where I could use my 'grid' control in 2 different manners: only directly bound to the database, the other one entirely unbound.

When unbound, it was up to me to decide what to put in each cell, the data being stored in an array in the background. However, if I had a combo in one column, I could directly access the value of the combo in line 10 by specifying something like 'mycombo[10]'. Furthermore, when unbound, I could perform very easily all kind of calculations without moving the current record (as in a bound grid). These calculations being performed entirely in memory, they were blazing fast as you can imagine. I could also include totals and sub-totals easily (though it was not part of the control itself. It had to be programmed, but it was not difficult to obtain).

I have a double purpose by looking for such a grid. First, I want to be able to access any line without moving the underlying record pointer, in other words, without navigating through the underlying table. Second, I have a special table in my application, which stores all the 'System Preferences'. This table has a unique identifier specifying which kind of information is stored in the record. The remaining of the fields are called 'param01', 'param02', etc., until 'param40'. For example, one of these record contains the way the user wants to format the General Ledger accounts in my business application. Param01 to Param10 store the name of each segment of the account, Param11 to 20 store the size of each segment, Param21 to 30 store the input mask of each segment. Param31 to 34 store other parameters such as the segment separator for example. I want to design the user interface such as the user will define the account number structure by using a grid. The first column is the segment number (from 1 to 10), the second is the name, then the size, then the format. The last line will calculate the total length of the account number (which is limited to 40 characters). This is the easiest way for the user to enter this information.

As the underlying data is not a set of records from a table, but a set of fields in ONLY ONE RECORD from a table, I cannot use a bound grid.

I hope these explanation will make it clearer for you to understand my goals.

Let me know if you can help me! And many thanks in advance!

Gilles