David,

>Thank you Jim. That makes it quite clear. Is there a good comprehensive reference on the event firing and action sequence for the range of visible controls/forms in VFP?

Not that I am aware of. I found out through trial and error. Basically using a debugout command to display teh value and the controlsource from each event. On leaving the control the keypress reported a difference and the Valid reported no difference so the update occured between the Keypress and the Valid.