>Erik,
>Thanks for explanation. That clears things up for me. But I'm still confused about running the form from a prg. When calling a form this way by default the form object name is private. Why can't I see this private variable in the debugger watch window?

The debugger shows variables that are in scope when you open it, not all variables, anywhere. If you SET STEP ON in a subordinate procedure, you should be able to see the var in the watch window.

>And why can't I reference this object name in the prg that called the form? If the object name is private it should be available there.

That's strange, and I don't get those results. The only thing that I can think of, is that the variable already existed, and VFP created an alias instead. This is where the NAME clause could come in handy, if you are not sure.