>Mr Jim Booth,
>
>no, i cant use that because i dont want to make all the textbox to be grey color
>i only want this 20 textbox to be grey color.

Well, two other possibilities besides df's are:

1) adding them all to a container, and running the Container.SetAll method

2) changing these 20 to be a different subclass of textbox, and setting the backcolor of the subclass to grey.