Cheers Paul,
Funny actually, my classes are named clsContact (for an individuals) and my collection class is called (funnily enough) clsContacts.

I guess that there isn't a way of doing it through VB as you said yourself
' example of getting the collection
' problem is that you get the add/remove methods too
' which is fair enough as it is a collection
which is what I am trying to avoid!

I don't think the Drives example is an invalid example because
A: It is a collection (or so the object browser tells me)
B: It doesn't have Add or Remove methods which collections are supposed to have.

I did consider the array way of doing it (more work) as you suggested and it does seem that this is the way that I will have to go!

Oh well, thanks for the pointers

Cheers

Shaun