>whoops, it appears that this is the offending line
>
> oworkbook.activesheet.Shapes(8).visible = .F.
>
>any idea why? anyone? the shape does exist, it's the same sheet opened every time and then just populated as a report for a job, the shapes form a large semitransparent word COPY for two copies naturally :)
>
>anything I can do to avoid this causing a c0000005 error?
>
>again it's only once every 20 or so runs it falls over. for the moment I've taken the shapes bit out and told people to use rubber stamps, they'll get nasty soon though, people don't like having to actually do stuff.

Are you really sure its still there? A C...5 error usually occurs trying to reference memory which does not belong to your application space. It can have other occurences, though as it's a general "catch all" type error.

Check if TYPE("oworkbook.activesheet.Shapes(8)")="O".