Hi there, Thanks for the reply. I was hoping to keep it all in SQL as that's where I was more comfortable with the ability to rollback a transaction in case of failure. I will definitely look into transaction processing in C# and thank you for pointing me in the right direction. Denise Denise

Thanks, y'all! Now it seems I just have to learn how to get my setup right on here so I can see answers. :-) But seriously, I do appreciate the help. Hypermommy

I'll suggest you post this question at likeplum. They have programmers online to help you now. You can get a great answer to your question so fast. https://www.likeplum.com/help/programming?aid=3321

Doh! Didn't see it. Any way for a user like me to move a message or shall I just wait for an admin to do it (and probably rightfully chastise me in the process. :-D ). I'll definitely check out the article and thanks! Hypermommy

That did it! Thanks a million!!! Denise Duggan

I appreciate the answer. Yes, that does sound like a viable solution as long as I can code in VS2010 and it'll work in both of them. The problem I'm finding with coding this add-in is there's a dearth of information about programming for PowerPoint. Lots of info for how to use PP, but not much about programming for it. But thanks for the assist. Any little bit helps. ;-) Denise "Hypermommy" Duggan

I think I may have found the info I need. I'm partway through reading this article but it's starting to make some sense now. The article is Simple LINQ to SQL in C#[^] just in case someone else faces the same issue. Denise "Hypermommy" Duggan

Thanks y'all... I'll be checking them out. Appreciate the quick responses! Denise "Hypermommy" Duggan

I don't think so as this box is not on a network either. But I'll have to check what the SPs and hotfixes fixed as that may be part of it. Denise "Hypermommy" Duggan

Clean the project and rebuild? I'm afraid I don't understand. There's still a lot of tools in Visual Studio that I'm learning... is "clean" one of them? I do appreciate the assistance, believe me! I ended up finding a workaround... I noticed that if I clicked OK on the messagebox that informed me of the error, the system went on ahead and built everything and all looked and acted okay. So what I did was just put a separate catch block in there to catch just the object disposed exception and swallow it up and ignore it. That done, everything appears to work fine. Of course, the "solution" makes me a bit nervous as ignoring exceptions is probably not the safest thing to do..... But maybe it gives a clue to one of you gurus that says what's going on... 'cause this is still too weird to me. Denise "Hypermommy" Duggan

They're all in the ToolBox, under the Containers tab. FlowLayoutPanel, Panel, TableLayoutPanel, GroupBox, SplitContainer, ... All you have to do is look up each control at MSDN[^]. A guide to posting questions on CodeProject[^] Dave Kreskowiak Microsoft MVP Visual Developer - Visual Basic      2006, 2007, 2008 But no longer in 2009...

We ended up finding a company called NexCopy and according to their salesman they can do what we need to do. They copy stuff over in two stages, apparently. The first stage is the same for every stick that's plugged into the unit and that's when we'd copy over our program. Then they pull information from separate staging files for separate sticks. So stick number 1 would pull additional data from folder #1, stick #2 from folder #2, etc. That's where we'll put our serial number. Thanks all! Denise "Hypermommy" Duggan

I don't think you'll be able to use Crystal without installation. When you install the Crystal runtime it installs hundreds or thousands of files in different directories. Tosch

I appreciate it. Yes, ideally I'd be using a different server. Unfortunately, with this client that's not do-able. It's something I hope to be able to convince them of the necessity of in the future but for now..... As far as SQL Server being backed up... I doubt it. If they have to do something different from a regular Windows backup then I don't believe it's happening. Just something else I need to talk to them about. Figuring that the hosting provider (a small company) is not doing a separate SQL Server backup, is it possible to point me to some quick literature of just a couple pages that I could send him to say "do this"? Denise "Hypermommy" Duggan

An excellent solution. I too was unaware of this event. :thumbsup::thumbsup: Henry Minute Do not read medical books! You could die of a misprint. - Mark Twain Girl: (staring) "Why do you need an icy cucumber?" “I want to report a fraud. The government is lying to us all.”