That explains the behavior I'm seeing: the only bars that exist prior to activation of the popup are the ones explicitly defined with the Define Bar command--in this case it is the Cascade and the separator. The help file actually says that in it's on obtuse way so I'm not surprised. Even though _screen.formcount returns a correct value, PrmBar() won't return the caption until the popup has been activated. But _screen..forms() should get me to the caption information that I need.

Thanks