Eric, you've discovered the nature of Private Data Sessions. If the child form is using Private DS, then it doesn't see the parent's DE. You can create an object in the parent form with properties for the dates to return and pass that object... Or you can set your child form to use default data session, or the child form could update the underlying table and the parent form could requery it's data source...

>I was under the impression that optimistic buffering in a form will let one form replace a value in a record that another form has open. If this is the case, is there a reason that VFP won't let me do it? If it is not the case, what is a graceful way to deal with this? Here is the situation...
>A main form is bound to an entity's record. A button on the main form calls a another form whose duty it is to choose 3 dates for 3 different fields in the main record. I would like for the 'child' form to be able to replace the dates itself. Currently, the main passes the key value to the child, who has the table in its DE, and the child SEEKs the record for display and manipulation. But VFP will not allow updates. (Private Datasessions, optimistic table buffering). If the 'child' form was only dealing in one value, I would just pass it back to the main for REPLACEing. Currently, the only solution I see is to pass the values back in a concatenated string and parse them back out to dates in the same routine that calls the form. There has GOT to be a better way. Anyone?