Calvin,

>Pardon my stupidity, but it appears to me that the maskedtextbox imposes its mask on the user. If I want the user to be able to enter a price up to 999999.99 and I put that in the maskedtextbox as a custom format then it becomes difficult for the user to enter anything less than 999999.99 like 25213.83. Perhaps I just don't understand how to program the maskedtextbox.

Actually, my mistake...I didn't read your post carefully enough. You can't do this with the masked text box but Microsoft has provided this DecimalTextBox solution:

http://download.microsoft.com/download/0/8/7/087e6a47-7306-4a5c-ad97-d1ffd58d712e/decimaltextbox.msi

Best Regards,