Evelyn,

>in the first search, mygrid1 highlights the found record. but after the second try, i get error "activeform is not an object".

Somewhere in the code you did not post you must have a reference to _screen.ActiveForm, and and on your second try there is no form currently active. In general you need to test that before you can use it:

if ( type( "_screen.ActiveForm" ) = "O" )
   * there is a form active
   _screen.ActiveForm.SomeMethodCall()
endif