XLD,
thanks for the link. I had already seen it with the search as I searched and read every topic mentioning IP or PING. Unfortunately I didn't know how to get it to work in Excel, the part about creating a form kind of confused me. sorry

mikerickson,
the code you link to seems to work as long as the IPs are up. the first one that is not active hangs Excell "program not responding". Pretty sure it is something I'm doing, but I think I just did a copy and past and then stepped thru with F8 till it quit responding.

thanks all,
Charles