>in the when event of a button I can see what other control may currently have focus by using THISFORM.ActiveControl.Name
>
>I need to be able to *store* this control so that after the button does it's thing i can set the focus back to that previous control.
>
>I'm coming up empty. How does one do this?

you can use the lostfocus event of each control to set a property in the form/formset/app that will hold the lastactive
and when ever you want to know what was the last control check this
I used this technique in several places (it is coded into the base classes)
and it works great

Arnon