>How do you instantiate and manipulate an OCX control at run time without first going into the form designer at development time and dragging and dropping the ocx onto the form.
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>I'm trying to invoke the 3rd party OCX control DynaZip in a prg file.

As Nick mentioned, sub classing is the way to go.

As for me, for Dynazip, since it does not relate necessary to a form, I created a form class containing it. At run time, I just instantiate that form class and can reference the OCX in it after. Sometimes, like for Dynazip, we want to be able to use it from various locations and there isn't necessary a need to drop it on the form.