Much nicer, thank you!

I had to think about your answer for a bit, you mean I should use something along the lines of let myObj = ParseOrDefault(s) where myObj != null Yes, that works fine. Thank you again.

If you really want this (and I can understand some popups are annoying in the middle of a game), you could use PInvoke to get at EnumWindows, and check if there is any main window with a size equal to the screen size. It may be insufficient for exact size match (e.g. a maximized window is larger than the screen, just check it), and having multiple monitors might also complicate matters. Two prototypes to get you started: /// /// Enumerate all windows, calling a delegate for each of them. /// /// /// /// [DllImport("user32.dll", CallingConvention=CallingConvention.StdCall)] public static extern int EnumWindows(LP_EnumWindowsProc ewp, object lParam); /// /// delegate used for EnumWindows() callback function /// public delegate bool LP_EnumWindowsProc(IntPtr hWnd, int lParam); :) Luc Pattyn

Thanks, but for some reason I can't get it to work. To be honest I didn't look into it that much since I managed to find another solution earlier. I modified your example to my actual project: DataRowView v = (DataRowView)source.Current; DateTime date = (DateTime)v.Row["Date"]; ...but it doesn't work. This works fine though: In class: //public version of GetColumnValueAtRow public object PublicGetColumnValueAtRow(System.Windows.Forms.CurrencyManager source, System.Int32 rowNum) { return this.GetColumnValueAtRow(source, rowNum); } In Paint(...): DateTime date = (DateTime)((MyDataGridTextBoxColumn)this.DataGridTableStyle.GridColumnStyles["Date"]).PublicGetColumnValueAtRow(source, rowNum); -- modified at 12:46 Tuesday 17th January, 2006