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I have created a shell program that prints my reports. Unfortunately, when the report is run it is in '_screen' and so my report has an outer window and taskbars.
I am aware of using WEXISTS('Report Designer') and it doesn't work in this case. It seems to work when I run it from a form that is defined as 'Top Level Form'
Is there any way I can hide the _screen and just show the "Report Designer" window without using a separate form?
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Why exactly do you want to show the Report Designer at all, if what you want to do is print your reports?

do you mean the Report Preview window, or are you saying that you provide a MODI REPO design session within your app and then they preview/print from there?

I'm suspecting this because, otherwise, your comment about WEXIST() doesn't make a whole lot of sense <s>.

In this case, is your MODI REPO a NOWAIT or not (might not make a difference, but might).

Look:

The short answer to your question, assuming that this shell program does nothing but reports, is "MODI REPO ordinarily needs a host window".

You can use a top form for this *or* you can use _SCREEN.

There is nothing really wrong with using _SCREEN, and in fact it makes life easier, so maybe you just need to remove the menu and toolbars from _SCREEN -- which is easy to do and in some ways will be simpler than using a top form. Why don't you do that? Set up SYSMENU to be the way you want, release the toolbars, and avoid the complications?

If you have other objections to using _screen, and for other reasons are uncomfortable using top forms... there is one more, little known, way of accomplishing what you want to do. This is why I said "ordinarily" above <g>: You can do something like this:

_screen.Visible = .f.
modi repo x in macdesktop

... it's probably not supported and I have no clue whether it's going to do what you want in this case. You are going to have to create mechanisms for printing from the design window, for one thing. I mention it mostly as a curiosity.

But if you explain a little more what your problem is, IOW what your shell program is supposed to do (print or design? preview? what?)

When you used a host form for your MODI REPO (or maybe it was a REPO FORM PREV) did you use a form object, an IN WINDOW clause, or a WINDOW clause? You can DEFINE the host window IN DESKTOP too <g>. (Yes it is different from MACDESKTOP, that's not a typo!)

Lots and lots of weird possibilities here... just explain where you're trying to go a little better...

>L<