David,
In addition to what Sergey said I think you made typo in your expressions - parentheses mismatch (no error ? - grid should go blank then) :

"( iif(seek(master1.text1id, 'table1', 'textid'), table1.description, '') )"

Also you don't need bound = .f.

with thisform.mygrid
 .recordsource = ''
 .recordsource = 'master1'
 .Columncount = 2
 .Columns(1).ControlSource = ;
"( iif(seek(master1.text1id, 'table1', 'textid'), table1.description, '') )"
 .Columns(2).ControlSource = ;
"( iif(seek(master1.text2id, 'table2', 'textid'), table2.description, '') )"
endwith

Cetin

>My grid's recordsource contains only the foreign keys but when the grid runs it looks up the descriptive text from other tables and displays this instead. It's done using the following code.
>
>grid.recordsource = 'master1'
>grid.columncount = 2
>
>grid.column1.bound = .f.
>grid.column1.controlsource = (iif(seek(master1.text1id, 'table1', 'textid', table1.description, '')))
>
>grid.column2.bound = .f.
>grid.column2.controlsource = (iif(seek(master1.text2id, 'table2', 'textid', table2.description, '')))
>
>My problem seems to occur when I store this stuff in a table. I have a table that stores control properties (the actual property name text) and their values. The control property and their values that need to be set in order for the grid to work like your above example are store in this table (one line in the table for each property and value). When grid runs a procedure scans through this table and macro substitutes the data which sets up the grid. This program technique works very well except in this case. When the grid runs each column contains the same descriptive text even though the grid's recordsource table contains a variety of values. Why doesn't the grid display the proper descriptive text?
>
>Thanks in advance for any help.