You go it! :-)

>I think the light bulb finally went on.
>
>Is this how it works? When you add jobs to the COM/EXE, it returns almost immediately because it isn't really doing anything except adding the job to the array. Yes, it kicks off the timer but the 2 lines:
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>This.tmrDoTheWork.Interval = 100
>This.tmrDoTheWork.Enabled = .T.
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>do not cause any delay because that's just the way timers work, i.e. they get kicked off and work in the background.
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>So we submit the job, leave the timer to do the crunching and immediately return to the calling process.
>
>That's got to be right. Please tell me that's right. If it is, that's SLICK!
>
>Assuming that is right, could I have the timer set the value of a property of the COM/EXE object, to False when it starts the job and True when it finishes, then I could check the value of that property in the calling process to determine if it is finished? Something like that maybe?