>that works nicely. is there col/row control over locationy - raising it a couple of rows for example?

For both .left and .top the principle is the same, if you want to center them manually, i.e. without employing .autocenter property. They need to be half of the difference between your form's own width (or height) and the width of whatever you center it in, which may be a parent MDI form, _screen, desktop (did I miss anything?).

You can then nudge the result a few dozen pixels one way or the other.

this.top=(_screen.height-this.height)/2-40

...assuming that a standard textbox is about 20 pixels high... so 40 pix up should be close. You may want to try other ways to move your form around, just to get the hang of it.