hey nance, don't feel so bad. we're all here to learn and to enjoy ourselves doing it. so I just learnt something...don't skim through the boring bits in the manual, they may not be that boring! I must admit I feel a bit stupid, now I know how obvious this stuff is, but my original post did say.... 'am I dumb or is this something new?', and I guess it was new to some people. anyway, the html is 116k, takes 30 secs to d/l and 30 secs to read. if someone already knew it, I wasted a minute of their lives and I'm sorry. yes I tried out the animation controls and it is pretty easy, although I'm a keyboard person myself (hate being mouse-dependant), and I do try to keep my screen controls to the absolute minimum, so maybe I'll stick with the keys. the main thing is, I know how to do it now, so let's just be happy. as you say "nevermind" maclean