>Hi Alex,
>
>Thanks for the reply.
>
>How may I learn COM Automation?
>
>Cheers,
>Ali

Many programs act as both COM servers and clients, by exposing some of their capabilities (methods and properties) through an older MS standard called Component Object Model (COM).

Visual Foxpro can be both a COM server and a client. In your case you'd be interested in using it as a client, accessing another program (server) through COM Automation.

Most programs in MS Office are COM automation accessible (Word, Excel, Outlook, Powerpoint and Access).

If you have Access installed, you can do from VFP:

oAccess = CreateObject("Access.Application")

Now you have a pointer to Access object model. You can see some of it in Intellisense. You can also study their methods with the Object Browser.

I do not use MS Access so I can't be of much help there, but you should be able to do most everything you can do with Access, controlling it from VFP.

There is an excellent book to teach you how to do COM Automation with Word, Excel, Powerpoint and Outlook (but no Access):

"Microsoft Office Automation with Visual FoxPro" by Tamar Granor and Della Martin, http://www.hentzenwerke.com/catalogavailability/autofox.htm