Hi, I just found a dialogue box to test what you had stated and it worked. I used the keystrokes of insert + control + w to virtualize the current window. Then I just hit the esc key and all was back to normal. Thanks for all the help. Rich ----- Original Message ----- From: G.W. Cox Subject: Re: virtual buffer If the "it" that you referred to was the virtual window, escape should do the trick. If it was the error message you wanted to dump, that's a whole nother story.