Question re structures and scope

[Steve]

Hi all,

In a module I have the following structure..

Public Structure ButtonStatusFlags

Public butOK As Boolean
Public butNew As Boolean
Public butView As Boolean

End Structure
And in a usercontrol at class-level I want to declare one of these as
protected..
Protected ButtonStatus As ButtonStatusFlags

this gives me the error 'ButtonStatus cannot expose a Friend type outside of
the public class 'ucMyControl'

However I am able to declare it as FRIEND. This does not make sense to me as
ButtonStatus will be exposed MORE. ie to inheriting classes and outside

Can someone explain why this is so??

I can achieve what I want by moving my structure definition into my
usercontrol class, but I would like to keep it public so that I can use it
elsewhere without having to redefine it in each class.

thanks in advance

Steve