Shawn,

>Why is it when i create a user control and then drop it on a form i can not edit the contents of the user control.

What exactly do you need to "edit"? If you want to reposition buttons or textboxes and that sort of thing, simply make those controls public (or make properties for them, which is probably preferable) ... then you can access them all you want from the form that you dropped the control on. My guess is that they've been declared as private.

~~Bonnie