Hi Paul.

>Am I right in assuming that the reason I don't get the progress indication is that the main VFP window is not active yet?

Yes, that's the reason. Before calling Update, you could set _SCREEN.Visible = .T. or display a top-level form that the progress bar can display in. Alternatively, you can change the ShowWindow property of the SDTProgressForm class to 2 (As Top-Level Form).

Doug