>i have 2 identical INTRO forms. one opens tables in corrrect sequence by default and the other does not. there are no explicit USE or SELECT statements in the code. how does VFP decide in what sequence to open tables by default and can you change this sequence without code?

You cannot rely your application flow on the internal opening of tables. If you want to work with particular work area, then you should issue explicitly:
Select MyTable
Also, you should use prefixes referring to fields: MyTable.MyField