John,
>Thomas, I really do appreciate any input. I got so involvedin that other solution, I am afraid I ignored you. I apologize.
no problem.

>Let me see if I canmake this other solution work because I believe it will be less work getting from where I am to where I need to be.
The other approach will also work: this is a activeX variant of the "semaphore",
substituting a property for the table. You had to change to Exe as well, and you must work
through timers, which isn't needed with the DDE-approach. Speed "loss" should average
to (timer26 + timerCOM)*0.5, and if you set the timers to 100ms this should bet better than
to wait for 8 seconds <g>.

rgds

thomas