thanks to everyone who posted on this, it really helped
~M

>You have to save the reference in a propriety of the form, otherwise the variable will go out of scope at the end of the Init event.

PARAMETERS oform, mcallnum
>THISFORM.oForm = m.oForm   && You need to create the oForm property first

You then use THISFORM.oForm when you need to reference the parent form.
>
>BTW, referencing a parent form control from another form (specially when it's deeply localised like you case) is rarely a good idea. The day you will rename or move a control in the path, you will break the code and you it may take a while to locate and change all the references. It's far better IMHO to call a method in the parent form that will do the job for the child. For exemple:

*-- In the child form
>THISFORM.oForm.ShowIt()
>
>*-- In the parent ShowIt method
>*-- Tell the control to show itself

HTH
>
>>I have an application where a user clicks on a button and it opens another form, i call the form like this
>>

>>DO FORM nw_insure WITH thisform, mcallnumber
>>

>>on closing the form nw_insure i have to make a field visible on the parent form depending on certain criteria. I wanted to use
>>

>>oform.pgfpageframe1.page3.txt_enterinitials.Visible = .T.
>>

>>but this does not work. On the init of the nw_insure I have
>>

>>PARAMETERS oform, mcallnum
>>

>>so i thought that the oform.... would work. any ideas?