Hi Viv, this is what I've ended up doing - I wrote a simple interface with one property which my panel class implements, I then added a property of my interface type to the usercontrol class which I populate with the panel reference at runtime , then in the onclick method of the usercontrol I update the panel via the interface property, the enter and mouseenter events of the panel them simply setfocus to the control that is / was highlighted, sounds a lot more complicated than it actually is. Thanks for the heads up - you're right I don't need to bother with lostfocus()
Regards,
Peter J. Kane
Pete