Following is the piece of code i am using to populate action message. ActionMessages msgs = new ActionMessages(); msgs.add(ActionMessages.GLOBAL_MESSAGE, new ActionMessage(" error.notValidConfName")); saveMessages(request, msgs); I am not able to get the message for the key "error.notValidConfName", which i am storing in ApplicationResources.properties file kept under WEB-INF/classes folder. in the web.xml the entry for ApplicationResources.properties is as follows:- <servlet> <servlet-name>action</servlet-name> <servlet-class>org.apache.struts.action.ActionServlet</servlet-class> <init-param> <param-name>application</param-name> <param-value>ApplicationResources</param-value> </init-param> <init-param> <param-name>config</param-name> <param-value>/WEB-INF/struts-config.xml</param-value> </init-param> and in struts.config.xml I have the entry for ApplicationResources.properties as follows:- <message-resources parameter="ApplicationResources"/> is there anything else required to be done. I think i have done all what it takes to populate and action message from resource file. varun ahluwalia. regards