>We have hundreds of forms which came from FPW2.6 and work fine now under VFP7. The converter uses the assign statement on just about every property. So I have a thousand or so object properties to fix.
>
>VFP 7 simply returns a blank for any expression which it can't evaluate at design time and it correctly evaluate those it can. If I were to re-code it all for VFP 8 I could probably use the new EVL() function. I was hoping for an environment switch or some other setting which returns to VFP7 behaviour.

Ok, I see. If that setting has changed, yes, you may be right. Maybe there is a global setting. We'll see if someone from the MS team or from UT could come up with an answer to this.