Thanks, Erik - I didn't think this through. EVAL() is definitely cleaner.

Barbara

>I think a cleaner (and more dependable) way to handle this would be to get an object reference using EVAL, and then call setfocus with that reference:
>
>IF this.name = thisform.lastcontrol
> oControl = EVAL(thisform.FirstControl)
> oControl.setfocus()
>ENDIF