thanks again guys, all works a treat now.
Alexey - yup, it's fairly logical and i'm trying my best to get my head around it. It is fairly understandable, but as you say, the devil is in the detail. you need to type out lines and commands EXACTLY in the right place and position with no errors in any of the characters. thats where i'm falling over.
what would be wonderful would be a user interface that helps new inexperienced users with all these things. i've learned a lot over the last week or 2 and changed a load of code lines i never expected to. but even so, it's a shame all of this cant be made easier with a nice basic user interface meaning the adjusting of code lines isnt necessary.