i sure need to thank you folks TWoD, Rocket, Jc... as i said, i'm all thumbs so php and java are no different to me than are coke and pepsi! i'll try and again get back. you techie guys will fall off your chair laughing if i tell you what i do... i provide a text box against each answer choice... once the student is finished, i manually copy all the text boxes to excel. since excel can't read the values inside the text box, i again copy Individual values to the next column and then finally using the 'sum' and 'if' functions (that's coding for me) i calculate the final scores. if by chance anyone has a better way of excel understanding the text boxes, it would reduce my load drastically... thanks again.