>I need to click a button on a form, check to see if a set of files exist, if they don't create them, when they are done let the button finish it's code. The creation process may take a minute or so. Would it be a wise idea to use a modal form to display some sort of progess. Then based on the out come let the calling form have the control back to finish the process. I haven't used modal forms in my app but this may be a case where it is needed.

Steven,
Yes I think it would be wise to provide progress in a modal form.
You could also divide your processes into sections as form methods. Also have and editbox to provide feedback to user. ie:If you checked FoxyClasses DataUpdater it uses this technique with an ActiveX progress bar :

*Modal form process controlling method
with thisform
 if .Process1() and ;
     .Process2() and ;
*...
     .ProcessN()
 messagebox('Blah blah completed succesfully.')
endwith

* A method updating the indexes
with thisform
 .pBar.Max   = reccount('NewIndexes')
 .pBar.Value = 0
 .SetStatus('Updating indexes...')
* Do update
* As each update in a loop finishes update bar
   .pBar.Value = min(.pBar.Value + 1, .pBar.Max)
* As each update in a loop finishes

* Process finished
  .SetStatus('Updating indexes...Done.')
endwith

* Setstatus - Feedbacks user via editbox
lparameters tcMessage
with thisform.pBarStatus && pBarStatus is the name of feedback editbox
 .Value = .Value + iif(empty(.Value),'',chr(13)+chr(10))+tcMessage
 .SelStart = len(.Value)
endwith

This form need not be modal but it can call any modal form to get intermediate user input. Making this modal might be good if you don't want the user to go to other forms while the process is ongoing.
Cetin