>>>Now that I got it to work, there is a side issue. The user can hit RETURN to cycle thru all of the controls on the form, textboxes mainly, but now I want to exclude this chkbox from getting the focus, I tried no default and also issue a RETURN .F in its WHEN event but it still gets executed.
>>>
>>Did you try to set TabStop = .f. on this checkbox ?
>>
>>You can also put NODEFAULT in GotFocus event (and set focus to next control in sequence), but I think TabStop should do the trick.
>
>TabStop is what I was looking for, thanks.
>However, even with that, due to another textbox's keypress event that opens a listbox for the user to select, some crazy reason the cursor disappears and hitting RETURN, the chkbox keeps getting checked. crazy?

It looks like the checkbox is still being under focus at that time. One possibility would be to cover this checkbox with the transparent shape and call checkbox.click in shape.Click event.