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>My guess is that when you define the thing programmatically, you do not set a value for Value and it is defaulted to .F. which is not character. What happens if you set the initial value of .Value = '' in your code?
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>HTH
>Cheryl

I said before this didn't make sense to me, but now it does!
I always forget that Value = .F. when the object is created programmatically.
Thanks for the kicker.
Steve, forget my solution - this is much better.