charles, cricket thanks for your suggestions. i think perhaps i didnt communicate myself well initially. 1st lemme ask one question to charles > To delete an address from the Address Book program, you must open it > up. You can't do it from Mail. odd, i can add fine. and i have put an address book icon in the bar in mail so that i can open it from there. (this isnt good enough? i must go elsewhere and open the address book? i thought the whole point of placing app-icons in bars was so you cd get at them directly... i must not be understanding this.) now, the problem i was having is this________ i have a distribution list with about 10 addresses on it one of these folks has got a new email address and canceled the one i had already i have out his new one fine but i cannot remove the old one from the distribution list i can't hit delete can't drag to trash cant's even drag from the distribution list into the 'regular' list so every time i send a message to the distribution list (about 10 a day) i get a bounce message from the old email of this one person and yes charles, john lowther is the original j.lo