>It is odd that the behaviour should be different in these cases. I don't think I've ever seen the variable stay in scope when dealing with native foxpro collections (including built in ones) but, equally, I looked at some old word automation that I did and it seemed to work everywhere. I wonder if the difference is simply between dealing with COM objects or VFP ones ? Or, if not, what....
>

I've used the same strategy with Fox collections over the years, though I don't have an example at hand. There's nothing magical about FOR EACH that makes the variable go out of scope when it ends, any more than the loop variable of a regular FOR loop goes out of scope.

Tamar