>I know we have a progress bar that can show a user the progress of actions being performed, but how about when you dont know how long it will take (such as a really complex query), is there a way to display an animated gif to the user such as an hour glass with sand falling, to indicate to the user that something is going on. Usually I put up the processing please wait message, but I was wondering if there is a better method with VFP.

Hey Bret,

There is a sample supplied with Fox that plays an .AVI file. In the documentation of this sample it is mentioned you could do something similar to the windows "paper flying into a folder" animation for longer operations. I'm not sure if any of the common windows animations are available for use in other applications but at least there is a set of examples to get you going - all you gotta do is find an appropriate .AVI file...

Dave