>I have 5 tables in a data environment in a form. I don't really want to use table buffering, but then how can I keep from writing changes until I do a tableupdate? In row buffering, changes are committed when the record pointer moves.

I don't think that TableUpdate() is useful without buffering. If you really don't want to use it, propably you should use old Fox way with SCATEER/GATHER or something similar. This case you shouldn't use fields as ControlSource.