Hi Mike - thanks for that - in this case I think using the Label object will be best... really I just want to get away from grey buttons all over the place - I know I 've mentioned it before on the UT but I like to push out the boundaries a bit when it comes to user interfaces... my criteria is a) They gotta to the job and b) They gotta look sweet!!! I am just trying out some stuff in VB to see if it's feasible to have a VB or Delphi front end with VFP tables behind - Any comments???? I think the loss of sub-classing and data handling etc would be a big drawback... I don't know!!! - maybe I just don't know how to get the best interface out of VFP!!!