>daniel,
>sorry for confusing you. i see what was happening. when i used the following code in the Page.Activate event it would show all the columns in the table (9 columns) even if i had the grids column count set to 7. it was simply reading in the entire table.
>
> This.Grid.Recordsource=This.Grid.Recordsource
> This.Grid.Refresh
>
>i decided to forgo making PACK a user option and just went with SET DELETED ON.
>
>next question. i have a combobox on a dataentry form that activates as soon as the form is displayed. it should only be active when it receives focus. i have tried setting the enabled property to 'F' and then enabling it in the GotFocus event but it doesn't work. any suggestions? p.s. nice bandana! :-) Thanx

Check the TabOrder on your form, and don't go with enabled/disabled thing, it's just not the way to do it. Maybe put something like

ThisForm.< SomeObject >.SetFocus()

in the Form's init, but primaraly TabOrder.

Best