I figured this out:

string x;
 x = Properties.Settings.Default.MySalesDatabase

>I am trying to set up, and then retrieve a connection string, but i keep getting a blank returned
>
>My App.Config file is:
>
>?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?
> configuration>
> configSections>
> sectionGroup name="applicationSettings" type="System.Configuration.ApplicationSettingsGroup, System, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089" >
> section name="Top20.Properties.Settings" type="System.Configuration.ClientSettingsSection, System, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089" requirePermission="false"
> sectionGroup>
> configSections
> applicationSettings
> Top20.Properties.Settings
> setting name="MySalesDatabase" serializeAs="String"
> value>Provider=VFPOLEDB.1;Data Source=F:\MYFOLDER\LIVE\DFS.DBC
> value>
> setting
> Top20.Properties.Settings
> applicationSettings
>configuration
>(Ive stripped out all html tags... not sure how to send text with html tags imbedded)
>
>My c# code is:
> string x = System.Configuration.ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["MySalesDatabase"];
>
>Tia
>Gerard