>It's one thing to be able to get, say, an Excel w/s up, it's another to be know what the commands are. for example, I
can get Excel to start from VFP but how do I know what the commands are to, say, open a particular w/s, move to cell(A,13).
>
>Essentially I need to open up certain Excel w/s or CSV files (in either Excel or a text editor). How do I get a list of valid commands, etc., within those app's, so as to make them do my bidding?

Basically, the most common way is to open the macro recorder in Excel (Tools->Macros->Record Macro).
Accept the default dialog by pressing OK.
Do whatever you need in the spreadsheet then stop the recorder.
Now press ALT-F11 in Excel to go to the VBA editor.
Open the Modules tree node. Module1 will be your first recording.
Double-click on it and you will see the VBA-generated code.

It is generally fairly easy to translate to VFP.
Just prepend almost everything with your object reference to Excel (e.g. oExcel) plus a dot.
If you get stuck on a particular VBA command or function, ask away and we'll try to help.