It may just be that a couple days have passed, but I think I got past the behavior with a simple change.
The modal form was set to desktop=.t. which had it open as a popup from the calling form. Now, when I come back, the calling form appears to be holding the modal form, so avoids the focus issue. I have a design issue to get around, but can deal with that way easier than a problem that happens 33% of the time.

I also note that there is a modal form calling another modal form. The first modal form was what occasionally got the focus...is this multi-modal form calling allowable? I'm guessing it's not the best practice, but it is a very procedural, linear process that the client needs, so made sense at the time, I guess...


>>I have a problem I've never noticed before with a modal form in VFP 9. I have a few forms open, with the top one being modal. If I go to the hotspot in the lower right corner of Win7 to activate the desktop and then return to the program by clicking on the minimized task in the tray, the modal form is "stuck", i.e. I can't use any controls on it or any other form. It's like the modal form is unable to return focus to itself. Is this a bug with Win7/VFP 9? Is there a more graceful way to handle this?
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>I have seen this behavior even without the tray, but it generally had to do with the app losing focus then regaining it, including the focus going to the caller form, on which everything is disabled because it's waiting for modal form to exit. Can't remember what else is involved and what fixed it (or is it fixed at all or I just can't reproduce it at will).
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>Let's keep this one open...