wow, thanks ken. i managed to go through that page and find what i needed to do after looking though i decied to use this code, <?php // Emulate register_globals on if (!ini_get('register_globals')) { $superglobals = array($_SERVER, $_ENV, $_FILES, $_COOKIE, $_POST, $_GET); if (isset($_SESSION)) { array_unshift($superglobals, $_SESSION); } foreach ($superglobals as $superglobal) { extract($superglobal, EXTR_SKIP); } } ?> entered it into the top of my test file and worked first time. can't thank you enough. regards