Ok I have an mdi parent active with several child windows.  User selects file
/open picks a file..how do I reference the ACTIVE child from the parent?  from
within the child I can use ME, but how do I trigger it from the parent form??

background: I have designed, basically, a text editor, i want the specific
child to open th efile that is selected and read into a variable.

another answer would be ..how do I reference a variable defined in the parent
from the child?

that would work too

any help will be VERY VERY appreciated.

thanx
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OK, here is the problem: you may not reference variables or subs in the
child, only properties (like tag) or events (like click).  (At least that is
the way I understand it, if someone knows of a way, I would love to hear
it).  The way I do what you describe is to design two menu structures that
are nearly identical, one on the parent and one on the child.  When a child
is the active form in the parent, the child menu replaces the parent menu.  
Since the selection for File|Open would be from the child menu, you can
still use ME to do your operations.

To reference a property or event of the active child, use the ActiveForm
property:  MDIForm1.ActiveForm.tag = "Child1" will set the active child
form's tag property to "Child1".  If there are no active children,
activeform returns an error.

Hope this helps.

-----------------------
Bob Robinson

Atlanta, GA