Thanks for your response Dunfiddlin.

To answer your question on whether there was any reason to depart from the default sender and e variables --- I'm afraid I don't know enough about Visual Basic to answer that question =( I cut-and-pasted the code from someone else that posted on the forums and then chopped out the unnecessary bits and switch some code positions around. The event coding is a left over from my cut-and-paste job ---- I really don't know enough about event coding ---- as a matter a fact, I know next to nothing about it other than it pops up when I double-click an object on a form =)

So your 1st suggestion about adding all the form objects is a bit lost on me --- I might be able to play around with it and figure out what you mean but I can already visualize myself getting frustrated. Still, I'm going to try your suggestion(s) and see if I can figure them out ---- I'm usually clever enough to get myself in trouble at least...

I have been learning from several different books and probably jumping around too much. But I am having much more fun trying to make a game than I am writing a business application to figure out compound interest... that's for sure!

So thanks again Dunfiddlin and thanks again to everyone who has responded ---- these forums are great! It's nice to be able to get some advice on what I'm trying to do.