Hi John.

Here it is.
I sent :

"Hi Dave.
I'm using txtDate control in a grid and setting its cDateFormat to DMY. When I first tried it, I noticed there was a mask problem once I run the form, dates would come like "21/Ap/il 2". It looked like there was an InputMask for the control, but it was empty. Trying to find a way to fix it, I put XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX as the Column InputMask. Now, when the control gets the focus, the DMY works fine and I get the date in a proper way, but can't make all dates in the column work this way, and even in the same row, as soon as the control loses the focus, it goes back to Numeric format. I've set the Column Sparse to .F., and no luck. I'm only doing this as I made the txtDate control a standard in all forms in the application, and think I've spoiled the users, now they want it everywhere. Would you have a work of advice here ?
Thanks.
Ivan"

and then, I got :

"Only sparse = .T. is supported.
Also, set column.Bound to .F., then you set a different controlSouce for the column. The column controlsource is displayed when the cell does not have focus. The txtDate control only displays when it has focus. use an expression like MDY() for the column controlsource to display when the cell does not have focus."

So, I now can make this work. As usual, it was me not knowing how to deal with Column.ControlSource and Control.ControlSource.

Hope it helps.

Best.