holbrob, thansk for the suggestion- only problem is that 'bitmap image' is not on the list you describe!!! when I try and create it as a new file type, it won't let me cos it says its .bmp is already in use even though its not in the list! honestly its not there- i'm not blind!
spannersatcx, thanks too but the main reason i want to open a .bmp file is so i can edit aircraft panels in FS2002, which requires the file to have an associated prog for opening it first!