Thanks for the reply.

I tried .show some time ago and I thought it a bit strange. What i tried was

form.show()
form.control.setfocus()

and that's what it did..it gave the control the focus but not the form i.e it wasn't activated. I have to say I was a little confused at the concept of a control having the focus but not the form. The reason why it's important is that I have a timer control that is trapping CTRL-N and it doesn't work if I use .show.

I find it a little confusing (coming from VB land as I do) that VB and VFP have such different behaviour when it comes to forms when they are both MS products. Oh well, c'est la vie.

Pablo