>thanks Cetin I'll have to get a different head on when doing DOTNET, while we're on the subject, is there a preferred way of formatting a textbox containing a Datetime value, e.g. can I make it look like a date textbox "" \ \ " ?, thanks again

I think you can do it directly putting ' \ \ ' in its text and/or applying a mask (well I never worked with masks yet so not sure if one exists as a property).
Leaving it empty is another option because using DateTime.Parse() you could validate various date representations as a valid date. ie: User might type 2005/12/31, 31-12-2005, Jan 1, 2005 and so on.
Cetin