Hi Peter:

Thank you for your reply. I actually had something like this working a few months back when I initially made the post. The goal at the time was to create a single grid with a certain number of columns based upon user criteria selection at run time. In essence, the number of columns (days in a grid) would depend on what the user selected before submitting the page to dynamically create the columns and then fill the grid with data. Because the column count of the grid depended on user criteria from auto complete boxes and drop down controls, it is not possible to create the columns in the PreInit event because the values from the criteria controls have not yet been parsed by ASP.NET at that point. So the way that I got around the issue was to create five different grids declaratively in the markup code that each fit a specific scenario. Then, when the user makes his / her selections on the page, the appropriate grid will be made visilble and filled with data and all the others will be made invisible. It works quite well. However, if anyone knows of a trick to get the values of form controls at the PreInit event point, I would be interested in knowing in case I get assigned a project in the future where this may be necessary.

Thanks again for your follow up.