larry, thx for the reply. i did follow that advice some and found the recordsource did appear to disappear at time however... the one thing i may not have posted in this thread is that i am also using a container as the current control in the grid allowing a more practical display. i did finally solve the problem by "re-discovering" that an obscure data property (SPARSE) at he column level must be set to FALSE. arrggh. i would have found this faster had my classes been based in a prg. again, thank you for your replies, all!