Chris,

>Thanks - your suggestion solved it - it was because I had created my own method to open the database and tables instead of in the LOAD. Is there something different about LOAD? I just have to work out how to pass the details I need into the INIT and thats it!

Well actually I wouldn't open the data in load. The load in my lowest level form class just does all of the SETs that I need. They will be in place by time Init() runs where you can open the data however you want. If you have the tables in the DE of the form though VFP is going to open them on it's own and it might not have all the info it needs because this happens between Load() and Init().