>That Works like a charm - much cleaner - thanks dragan.
>how do i close the box after selecting date? (elementary question i know - please bear wih me)

You could add a timer to the wrapper form, which would periodically check whether wvisible("calendar"), and would just release the wrapper form when calendar is closed and/or _diarydate has changed. Though, I'm not sure whether the latter would be wise - the user may just go back and forth through the dates, looking for this or that ("when was the last Friday 13th?"), which may change _diarydate.

Theoretically you may find the hwnd of the calendar window and bind some event to it, but I don't see an easy way to do that.