You had me at Z-order and I said DUUUUHHHH lol
It makes perfect sense. Thanks a bunch. Stars coming your way.

Einar
>Einar
>
>Its the z-order that is coming into play here. It all boils down to the order in which you add them into the main parent container. Its hard to explain so just experiment. Add your menustrip and toolstrip without the splitter panel and see how they line up. When that is OK, add the splitter panel, set dock to fill and that should do it.
>
>>I am playing around a little with two new controls in 2.0.
>>I have a form. I added a Menustrip (new in 2.0). I added a ToolStrip (new in 2.0). I added a SplitContainer (new in 2.0).
>>All is good so far.
>>Now I set the Dock property of the SplitContainer instance to Fill (through the property sheet in design mode) and run it. Now I notice that my SplitContainer does not stop where the ToolStrip ends but the SplitContainer continues all the way up to the MenuStrip.
>>
>>I am sure there is a simple property I can set to solve my problem but I can't find that property. (I am sure I will go duhhhh when someone post the answer).
>>Does anyone know how I can make the SplitContainer "stop" where the ToolStrip ends?
>>
>>Note: I hope what I wrote makes sense to someone. If it seems like giberish please let me know and I can explain.
>>
>>Einar