Folks, In my previous message I forgot to mention the circumstances under which the corruption occurred. Here is the scenario which caused the corruption: - Somehow .bbdb buffer makes it to the top of the buffer stack thus leaving the cursor in it. - Unknowingly I type in a character into this buffer then switch to other buffers and continue with my work. - It is time to exit the 'emacs' session and I answer YES to the question of whter to save the .bbdb buffer. Emacs promptly saves this buffer. Now the next time around I am hosed when I try to bring up BBDB. Also is there someway of opening a file in Emacs but not have it available for interactive editing. If such a facility were available then BBDB could open the .bbdb file in this mode so one cannot edit or corrupt this file by accident. - Anantha Padmanabha N. Srirama - ******************************************************************************* Anantha Padmanabha N. Srirama * mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 1250, E.Arques Avenue, MS:298 * voice: 408.992.2251 Sunnyvale CA 94088-3470 * fax: 408.992.2926 *******************************************************************************