I'm working with some embedded forms and I'm getting some strange behavior that I'm sure is explainable, but that I cannot explain.

So, I have my main Windows Form. This has a TabControl with 4 TabPages. Then I load, depending on which is active, a new form into the Tabpages, without borders, and with TopLevel = False. This new form itself has three panels, one of which contains a TabControl in which I load another form onto its tabpages.

When I write it out like that I get this sense that I'm doing things in a complicated way. But I don't know no betta'. Anyway, my problem is that On that third form I load into the second form, I can't get any tab performance. I can click on a control within that third form, but if I press the tab key from within the third form, it jumps over to the next control in my second form.

I sense that it has something to do with "z-Order" but I don't know how to use it, or just what it means, exactly. When I tab through the controls in my Main form as the program is running I can see the Active TabPage highlight, and if I use my arrow key at this point I can move between the TabPages on this embedded control, but I can't seem to get the tabOrder to move into the particular tabpages.

Thank you for any help.