>>The quick and dirty fix is to declare the form variables PUBLIC
>>PUBLIC CustOpen, CustClose
>>although this isn't the best solution.
>>
>>You might allocate the sub-forms to properties of your main screen ( I assume that this is possible).
>
>Is this as simple as just adding two properties in the form designer or is there more to it?
>
>
>>do form custopen name loMainForm.CustOpen noshow LINKED
>>
>>Another possibility would be to channel all form create/destroy/show through a Form Manager object that will manage form references internally.
>
>That sounds intriguing, how to make that work?

The form manager concept is popular in any of the available VFP frameworks. Essentially the form manager class, which is usually a child of the application class, is called whenever you want to create/destroy or manage (tile/cascade etc.) the forms that make up your application. Because all the form references are kept within the form manager (usually in an array that is a property of the object), these references never go out of scope.