Hi Alex.

>An employee table has a field which contains a foreign key to the department table. In the employee maintenence form I have a dropdown control that shows all departments. Do the tables need to be related or does the ControlSource and RowSource properties of the dropdown take care of the connection ?

You do not need to set a relation between the tables. You can set up your combo like thid:

RowSourceType = 6-Fields
RowSource = Department.DeptDescription, DeptPK
ColumnCount = 2
ColumnWidths = 200,0
BoundColumn = 2
BoundTo = .T.
Value = 0
ControlSource = Employee.DeptFK

Marcia