I'm not sure I completely understand your problem. However, I gather you simply find it a nuisance to have to write an extra / mark in your code. I made a little utility a while ago, that if you paste any text you want to send to a textbox, you simply paste or enter the text you want formatted. Then click process, and it inserts all the slash marks, and etc. Then you paste that code into your application, and voilla, you can have the text programmatically inserted into a textbox or richTextBox. idk if it's useful or not, but you can download it here (I find it handy for entering multiple lines of code): http://www.teched.coe.ohio-state.edu/lugnut/stephen/Text Formatting Revealer.zip if it helps you any let me know. I'm aware the output is somewhat sloppy, nevertheless it works with 100% functionality as far as I've tested it. good luck solving your problem, Stephen