Thanks for the attempts to sort me out, however I am going to use a form as a messagebox for now. I cannot locate or see where any other activity is going on to upset the focus aspects. I removed 2 timers even though they were not enabled, I removed form skinner controls, but to no avail. Basically I have a mainform which appears blank, but has a second form open on top. The second form is smaller than the mainform. This second form has controls on it to accept user procedure requests. When they complete their request, form 1 unloads and the mainform opens up facilities they have asked for. Its during this that a message box appears to ask confirmation of something they want to save or not. Its here the mainform dissapears when the messagebox is displayed. As VB5prgrmr said, it will possible sort itself out when its an exec, but its a pain in design. I did a quick test on a new project with similar forms but only having a messagebox called, and that worked okay, so obviously something is going on behind the scenes. Because of time, I will use a form for now and get a chance sometime later to try and find out what the problem is. Hope you all don't think I'm a time waster on this one, and many thanks again.