>>>I have a VFP exe running with a visual presentation of records in a grid. This particular screen is a visual class. A separate exe(not VFP) will run a vfp com dll to update the records in the table the exe is displaying in the grid. How can I also have this dll refresh the screen in the original vfp exe.
>>>
>>>In other words; can this com dll talk to the exe that is already running? I'm new to this com process and am wondering if I can do this. I can't re-write this entire VFP app in the amount of time given but am planning on pulling some of the non-visual code out into dll's that other programs in this suite can use. However I need to be able to still talk to the original VFP exe in some fashion that will also be running. Is there some way of doing this without using DDE?
>>>
>>>Confusing, isn't it?
>>>
>>>Any help would be much appreciated.
>>
>>First, you aren't using DDE ... you're using COM.
>>
>>The EXE will make a call to the COM DLL and will wait until the COM DLL is finished processing. At that point, it can update its display.
>
>
>No, I understand that. We use DDE now for other things and are getting away from it.
>
>Let me try this again.
>
>EXE #1 - Monolithis VFP exe running with grid displayed.
>
>EXE #2 - A different exe written in C++ (that has actually been called by EXE #1) will call a new com dll to update the tables behind EXE #1. This EXE also needs to somehow refresh the screen in EXE #1 after the dll has updated the tables. Can this dll access the objects in EXE #1 in some manner to refresh the screen to show the updates?

Nope.