I have looked all over the internet and i can't really find anything that really explains serialization well enough that i can follow whats going on. I have the sams book that shows how to do it but the tutorial is jsut here is the code now go. Its hard to understand. Plus, I don't want it to be document view. Here is what i'm wanting. I want a dialog box that i can click an add button and then it popup another dialogbox and i enter information into the edit boxes (that part is easy). But i want it to store the input into a file that can be saved. and then be able to on the main dialog type in a keyword or whatever and it search the file and then spit out the results. I know how to do it with ifstream and ofstream but all of my experience is console based and very little with visual. I know its CArchive and CObject and Serialize but again my knowledge of the subject is very narrow. If someone has the time to explain that would be great. Or if there is a tutorial on the subject that explains to the most part each line of the code dealiing with serialization that would be great. thanks again