Alan,

>> Minimize and restore the class designer to clean up the design
>> surface.
>That's new to me, up to now I have closed it down, then reopened it.

You learn that one when dealing with builders that tend towards leaving grip droppings all over.

>That's the weird thing - it's as if VFP didn't want to know about my changes and said "You're going to have it this way, whether you like it or not!"

Well it's the toolbar that's doing that to you.

>So if you place the add/edit/delete, etc. buttons directly on the form (I assume inside a container class), where is your preferred position? Top left?

Yes I have a couple of containers of buttons I use. Most often they end up bottom right.

>But if you have two or more 'standard maintenance' forms requiring the same toolbar on screen at the same time, isn't that where you can save space on the form itself by having a singe toolbar?

Well I don't find that the forms typically need to be bigger because of my button container. And even when the form needs to be a little bigger it doesn't take up as much overall screen space.

>That's the trouble corresponding with you folk on this forum. They get you thinking that maybe the way you've been working all these years may not be the best way after all! I'm spending far too much time weighing-up the pros+cons of each approach and whether I should jump ship or not!

There's no shortage of opinions or different ways of doing things around here. *g*

PS you ought to turn on the autoquoting feature under your account setup rather than doing it yourself.