>>>G_pc is defined elsewhere; in the debugger I see it properly assigned to the InputMask property of the textbox in the column. Still, the numbers show without it. Any clues?
>>
>>Is your column's sparse property set to .F.? Otherwise default textbox displays in inactive cells.
>
>I have found that often (more often than not), you must set the focus to the column in order for the input mask to appear. I've even written a method called
>SetFocusAllColumns() within my grid class which does that after the grid is built (self building grid).
>
>Steve

In my case this wouldn't work - all the processing is done within form.activate, and the grid never gets focus (so doesn't anything else, for that matter). It's just some kind of a progress indicator, to show what's the program doing. Anyway, .Sparse did it.