Andy, I tried sending this to you directly but your account rejected me:) Thanks, we have some cross reference data located in the top left corner of many of our drawings. We are trying to build a database of this data and it seems best if we can automate it. Hopefully 5000 dxf files will be easier to deal with. The data we are looking for is a 5 digit number (our part number). There can be 10 or more, each in single line text objects. Now I need to work out how to find them in a dxf file:) I have isolated the sort of data I am looking for but I need to work out what it all means. I think I have found a decent reference for dxf file format now so I should have this sorted sooner rather than later. Thanks, David