Thanks to all who replied, I have now found my error and the code works fine, Malcom came up with a snippet (I was assigning the color pair as 1 and not as COLOR_PAIR(1)) Regards, Kat. --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.443 / Virus Database: 248 - Release Date: 10/01/2003