Alan,

Thanks for the suggestion.

IMHO, it seems like a very basic requirement to know the length of the user input.
I find it hard to believe that after all these years and versions of VFP that it is not available as a simple function.

>I doubt there is a way to do it without somehow using the keypress event to capture individual keystrokes. It doesn't need to be very complicated though. You only really need to worry about the keypress of the spacebar. If you just count the space keys, then you can add them to the normal "Len(AllTrim(text1.text))"
>
>Alan
>
>>Is it possible (without using keypress) to determine the # of characters (including trailing blanks) in a field?
>>For example, I have a field in an form (no control source) that has an input mask of =replicate('X',30). If 'abc' or 'abc ' is input, the length of this.value is 30. If I check the length of the alltrim, it is 3, of course.
>>Or to present the question another way ... How would I determine * exactly * what the user entered?
>>TIA.