ya i think that is what was happening too =P i just couldn't understand why if you made variable b equal to a, why changing b changed a... i could understand if b was a reference to a, that changing a would change b, but i would have never figured it to be the opposite x.x... in any case, i've found .equals() is the perfect solution... cause it allows me to copy the same specification as the tabpage, without changing the original ^^