Well, for the simple one line of text in a file you won't need to parse anything. You can simply do just the opposite of what I have above. Check if the file exists but don't delete it. Instead of using File.CreateText you will use File.OpenText. Instead of using System.IO.TextWriter use a System.IO.TextReader. Instead of using WriteLine() use ReadLine(). It's all pretty simple. However, if you're putting multiple lines in the file for multiple objects/properties it does get a little more complex. A more simple way to do this would be to just serialize the label (or whatever other oject you have) into a file and deserialize it back from the file to an object in the code whenever you need it. A good example exists right here on code project: http://www.codeproject.com/csharp/objserial.asp[^]