>Thanks Ed, but I'm still lost. Help didn't help. I tried to set the When event of the field to .F. but got a message that property is read only. Could you please be more specific on how to do this?
>

Subclass the standard textbox; in your subclass have the When (it's an event) return .F., so that it never will receive focus. Instead of filling the column with the default textbox control, add the subclassed textbox to the column and make that the current control for the column.