You know you might be right about standard edition. I personally never used standard. Alex Korchemniy

Hi there and many thanks for your reply. I had already read this article but I dont think it helps with changing the background colour of an individual word. However, I just found a great article by Andrew Forget (CodeGuru) about Rich Edit 2 and I am hoping that this does the trick. Have a happy and prosperous new year! BazM

Hi, I eventually passed a long* ptr and casted back to CRichEditCtrl* in the COM method. Not nice but it seems to work. I hope to eventually discover the proper "COM" method of approaching this problem! BM :-O