Tim, to really have the kind of control you (will ultimately) need over your user interface, I think that subclassing a textbox and dynamically instantiating as many as you need in a control array is the way to go. The syntax is a bit tricky in the form's AddObject method:

Object.AddObject(cName, cClass, ...

because cName needs to be an array element like "MyControls[1]".

But if you subclass and use this approach, you will be able to dynamically dimension the control array to any size you need, traverse the array however you need, and use the Setall method to perform global changes on all instantiated textboxes of this class quickly.