>The kludge I have implemented to get around this peculiar behaviour is simply to test for the existence of the variable 'oform.name' ahead of the 'oForm Release() command. (If type('oform.name')<>'U' )
>
>which resolves the problem, but the question left hanging in the air is, of course, why should I need to do that in the first place?

Is the diary form instanciated from another form? If that other form was released before it, the diary form may have be released with it (lost its only object referrence), and therefore already didn't exist at the time. Well, it happens in some cases - it really depends on the order of the forms in the _screen.forms collection.

One sure way to avoid this is to

do while _screen.formcount#0
_screen.forms[1].release
endd