I guess that the confusing thing here is that there seems to be more than one way to do this and ms documentation being what it is ... I finally, with what I read of your and Nigel's code figured out what I was doing. Can't thank y'all enough for pointing me in the right direction. and I found that some of what I was looking for was documented in msmapi96 help but not very well. Again, thanks and I am going to pick up spyin, Jeff