Hi Scott, Cheers for your reply, it makes sense. I happened to come across a chapter on user controls in a book I have and it enlightened me about it all. The one thing I hadnt been doing is assigning my control to a variable before adding it to a placeholder, ie

myctl = ctype(loadcontrol(myctl.ascx), menu)

Then I can access its methods & properties etc

myctl.name
myctl.colour

Cheers Davey