>>Is there a way to force the background of a textbox to be transparent even when the textbox has focus? I have a scenario in which I need the object behind the textbox to show through even when the textbox has focus and have noted that even if the Backstyle property is set to "Transparent", it "reverts" to opaque while the textbox object has focus.
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>Try setting the SelectedBackColor property to the background you want, eg:
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this.SelectedBackColor = this.parent.backcolor

Thanks Ed. This would certainly work for a solidly colored object behind and I probably should have been more specific about the underlying object. It will not be a solid color. It's actually a shape object, in this case an ellipse that I need to show through so I need the textbox transparent. This is a highly specialized and bit unusual situation and am suspecting I will have to look at another method of implementation for which I have some thoughts I am formulating now. I found it interesting, tho, that the backstyle reverted to opaque on receiving focus. I've worked with VFP a long time but had never thought about this particular behavior, although I can see how they would set it up to work that way.

Bill