Hello Jonathan.

Thanks. Where should I place that code?? in the form's refresh event?

First of all, an explanation of why you are seein gthis behavior:

One of the behaviors that has driven people crazy since the earliest days of FoxPro, and which still drives developers nuts in Visual FoxPro, is the way in which a control’s Valid() method fires. The problem occurs if you have a control (e.g. a TextBox) which has code in its Valid to ensure that bad data cannot be entered and also use a Toolbar or a Menu option to initiate the save. A user can enter bad data into the control, choose SAVE from the toolbar or menu, and the control’s valid fails to fire, allowing the bad data to be saved. What is going on?

The answer lies in the purpose of the Valid()! This event, is intended to fire when a control is about to lose focus in order to determine whether it should be permitted to lose focus or not. However, if the control does NOT lose focus, the event never fires. Unfortunately, this is precisely what happens when you use a toolbar (or a menu option) to determine the next action. The reason is that neither a toolbar, nor a menu, ever receive focus in Visual FoxPro, so the focus never leaves the control and the Valid never fires - the result is bad data in your database.

The reason for this behavior is so that Toolbars and Menus will not interfere in the normal operation of screens. It would be very irritating indeed if all the user wanted to do was to use the EDIT options of the menu to copy some text and the Valid (and LostFocus) of the current control immediately fired. After all, there is no way for Visual FoxPro to know WHICH menu item, or toolbar button, the user is about to choose!
The solution is to ensure that in your SAVE routines you force the currently active control to lose focus - thereby firing the Valid and LostFocus events.

Now, what you want to do is add a method called WriteBuffer() to your data aware form class. This code goes in the WriteBuffer() method:

LOCAL loColumn, loActiveControl, loControl, llRetVal

llRetVal = .T.
IF TYPE( 'Thisform.ActiveControl.Name' ) = 'C'
  loActiveControl = Thisform.ActiveControl
  IF UPPER( loActiveControl.BaseClass ) # 'GRID'
    *** If there is code in the valid method of the active control
    *** And the entry is invalid, the error message will display
    *** But the rest of the code code will continue to run and save
    *** the bad data anyway. So we cannot just issue a SetFocus()
    IF NOT EMPTY( loActiveControl.Valid() )
      *** We still have to cause the Valid to fire to update the data
      *** from what is in the buffer because the previous line
      *** does not cause the Valid to fire, it merely runs any code
      *** in that method
      loActiveControl.SetFocus()
      llRetVal = .T.
    ELSE
      llretVal = .F.
    ENDIF
  ELSE
    FOR EACH loColumn IN loActiveControl.Columns
      IF loActiveControl.ActiveColumn = loColumn.ColumnOrder
        loControl = EVAL( 'loColumn.'+ loColumn.CurrentControl )
        IF NOT EMPTY( loControl.Valid() )
          loControl.SetFocus()
          llRetVal = .T.
        ELSE
          llRetVal = .F.
        ENDIF
        EXIT
      ENDIF
    ENDFOR
  ENDIF      
ENDIF

RETURN llRetVal

I am assuming that your data aware form class has a DoSave() method that gets called from the click of the Save button in the toolbar. Call your WriteBuffer method like thid from your form's DoSave() method:

IF Thisform.WriteBuffer()
  *** Your code to save the data here
ELSE
  *** The valid of the currently active control
  *** returned false
ENDIF