>Well, I guess I have been extremely lucky then, because I have gobs of forms that do this, and have not ever seen any problem behavior because of it.

Then you didn't have any serious code in the parent's .activate(), because calling a control's .refresh() during .init() (of the control or anywhere in the membership hierarchy) will force the form (or container) to go visible, which will then fire its .show() and then .activate(). If you didn't have much code there, then probably nothing wrong happened.

The solution I'd propose against that kind of problem, when present, is to put such code in a custom method of the combos, something like .Setup(), whichwould be called when necessary - when binding, or from .refresh() or .requery() - depending on what it needs to do.

A simpler trick for Dmitry to try before this is to give his unbound combo an initial .value, preferably in the PEM sheet.