The usual way to start a program from within XyWrite is to shell out to dos and run the program. In Win, you can even start Windows programs from the DOS box. One problem I've run into is that XyWrite keeps running too - sometimes my routines would kill a temp file before a Windows file could open it. Example: Convert a Xy file to a temporary file in RTF format, shell to DOS to start WordPad with the RTF file as the argument, and then issue an XPL command to kill the temp file. Problem: I was killing the temp file before WordPad could finish loading. My original solution was to put in a pause in the XPL routine after DOS/nv/x/z /c "c:\[path]\[filename]" New solution: DOS/nv/x/z /c START/w "c:\[path]\[filename]" Start/w forces the [filename] being executed to complete its execution before handing control back to XyWrite. You can also use Start/w in commands that launch programs from within batch files. Another hint about using batch files: Create a shortcut to the batch file Right-click on the shortcut and click on Properties. You can then choose a new icon, rename the shortcut, and indicate (on the Program tab) Run minimized and Close on exit. There are other advanced settings, but these will get the batch file to run invisibly and disappear automatically when it's done its work. Batch files may be useful for spawning processes from within XyWrite, or for starting XyWrite itself with different argument parameters. Tim Baehr tbaehr@xxxxxxxx