>I read that. In looking over the documentation, there's no indication of what might happen if, as in your case, an invalid character is used.
>
>You might want to let MS know about this through their web site. I'm not sure if Esther Fan is still doing doc review, otherwise, I'd suggest that you email her about it.

Now that I think of it, it is actually quite logical, although it didn't seem so to me at first.

Invalid characters, as the ":" in "##:##", are shown, but for purposes of user input, they are simply skipped.

Say you have an InputMask like "##-##". The "invalid" character (not specified as an InputMask character), "-", is skipped.

Now, if you have one or more invalid characters at the beginning, as in "---##", the cursor will immediately skip to the first valid character.

Now, if I use an InputMask consisting only of invalid characters, for instance, "-----", there is no place to input data. Then, where else should the cursor go, but to the next field.