I personally use Word for any of my message templates. Saves me typing the whole lot every time I post something. Especially if I use a table in the message, like this one. *G* It can be as simple as a table with a 1px border to something more complex such as the welcome message for the new Greeks in Hellas. If you do use word though, it likes to convert the "" to curly brackets. AW doesn't like curly brackets and will basically ignore them and your message won't display properly. Any text editor can be used in this way and that includes Notepad and Wordpad. Save it to your desktop and copy and paste it straight into the place where you want to post it. As for size and dimensions, you can make it as long or as wide as you want to but I would keep it to a resonable size as it may take a while to download for those on dial-up. The more backgrounds, graphics you put into it, the longer it will take. A simple message saying welcome, pointing out the main features/highlights in your group along with the main plaque is really all it should say. To keep it consistant with your group, use your groups colours. I hope this helps you. If you have any further questions, please don't hesitate to post them. :-D All of us are happy to help.