>Undocumented, but also works is MODIFY REPORT...IN MACDESKTOP. This automatically creates the report designer outside the main VFP window.
by God it worked. You are truly a fount of usefull knowledge but i bet you never thought you would use that little piece of it again!

did you read the thread about someone recently trying to see if some active-x controls were registered? i had an idea about taking apart the code in the vfp gallery which, as one of it's components, returns a list of all the registered active-x codes in a nice list. i didn't get a change to try it yet...

thanks again!

scott