>1. When should the programmer clean up open forms vs. when is it under the user's control
>
>2. I am having trouble getting the 4th form activated after leaving the others behind open. control will eventually go back to the first( I hope)
>thanks

My .02c is that I let the client open as many new forms as he likes, but many of my forms can only be opened once (ie under program control). I have a form opener method which has a "tlUnique" parameter. If this is set to true then the code looks for a current instance of the called form and simply Show()s it.
Each form that's open consumes an incredible amount of memory. You could put code in the form opener method which reminds the user

if <toomanyformsopen>
   Messagebox('Have you thought about shutting down some of these forms, Bozo?', 48, "Hey you")
endif