I have a prop made of many components. How do I lock the prop in such a way where it will not move and the parts stay where they need to? I am posing characters around the prop but occasionally I accidently active a piece and move it when I just want to move the figure....

Select the prop... from the object menu select "Lock Actor"... done :-)

So an Actor is a prop? That works - now how about selecting mulitple objects - is this available in the Heirarch editor where you can click down a list - I don't see it......

you could stack all the elements of the prop inside one component, just drag and drop each component into one.

EDIT: Sorry forgot, in the Heirarch editor drag and drop... as above

This is my prefered way of handling multiple prop components. From the Free Stuff, download and install "MinFig". Note that this is NOT an automatic install. Extract the files in MinFig.zip to any sub-folder of the Poser character folder.

In poser, load MinFig, parent all the components to its 'Body' actor. With MinFig selected, from the Poser menu bar select the 'Figure' menu, then select 'Lock Figure'. When you lock MinFig all the props parented to it will also be locked. Using MinFig you can do various operations on the props as a group, to move all the props as a group just move MinFig's Body, to scale all the props scale MinFig, to hide all the props hide MinFig, etc.

If you save MinFig back to a Figure pallet (with a new name) all the props will save with it. The only down side is that you will have to remember to look for your props in under the Figures pallet, instead of the Props pallet.

I tried putting all the props inside the other i.e make one part the PARENT.  I can lock the Parent easy enough but all the stuff linked as child parts can still me moved around....:(

I'll give the minFig a try - but it would be easier if all of this were in a screen like the Hierarchy editor so you could just click on a parent and everything below it for locking purposes......