>I had initially tried setting focus to a hidden textbox and my problem was that once you scrolled through the grid due to a full screen of records , for instance, your input textbox focus was history!!

I'm not sure I understand you here. All the textbox needs to do is initially accept the scanner input. It does not have to have focus for anything else afterwards.


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>I also tried the scanner "preamble" feature but my application would interpret the F1 - F9 function keys differently than I had anticipated, ie. $M, $P etc. . . .
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>Oh well, . . a hot-key will have do the trick. One last question . . . Should I use ON KEY . (or some other command) in the Forms init method or the pageframe init or the grid's or where ?
>
> Thanks again for your help.

Set the form.KeyPreview to .T., and put the code in the form's keypress event.