>if not used('USERFILE')
> use Progpath+'USERFILE' in 0 exclusive
>endif
>select USERFILE

If you are usign PDS and other forms may have the table open Don't open it exclusively. Exclusive use of a table should be avoided except for the administrative activities that absolutley get exclusive use.

Second, The table may not be open with teh alias of UserFiel, it may ahve some other alias. USED("UserFile") only checks to see if there is an alias with that name in use. You can assure the opening of the table with;

IF NOT USED("UserFile")
   USE UserFile AGAIN ALIAS UserFiel IN 0
ENDIF
SELECT UserFile

>The other issue that I can't wrap my head round is the disappearing form name!

A form is an object, objects have a name property. The contents of the object's name property is not necessarily the same as the variable name for the object reference (it may be, but you can't depend on it).

You can use _screen.activeform as you have foudn out, but better than that is to create a form manager object that launches all forms and keeps track of them.