yes i did restart and still no luck. i save my files before and after any significant changes, this way if it looks like crap i can just go back, i do this every couple of minutes. the file was a recent save, whenever i try to open it a message comes up stating that it is unable to read the file. i figure it is corrupted and i should just delete it, but i wanted to check here first to see if anyone else encountered this problem. thanks sirkrite for the time and suggestion, definitely appreciated! eb