I think the best way to determine if text has been modified and also to handle hotkeys is to add a listener using the addVerifyKeyListener method of StyledText. It may also be necessary to add a ModifyListener or ExtendedModifyListener to deal with text replacement. I'm trying to figure out the difference between the two modify types. John -- John J. Boyer; President, Chief Software Developer Abilitiessoft, Inc. http://www.abilitiessoft.com Madison, Wisconsin USA Developing software for people with disabilities