here is some parse file code, you will have to modify it for your variable names and such but in short it creates a URL, opens a URL stream, then assigns that stream to the BufferedReader class. Good Luck. Some Notes: The String variable passed to this method "fileName" holds the URL for Anne's data file. You might want to hard code this in. I took out all the references to my GUI class, they were primarily sending stuff to the screen. /* If you use this code, comment that it came from: Michael A. Long. */ private URL sourceURL; // Variable to hold URL name. private InputStream instream; // Variable to access the URL stream. private BufferedReader inFile; // BufferedReader variable that you actually access. private Vector inputLines = new Vector(10,10); // I stored my datafile in a vector and then parsed it. // you can parse each line as it is read in if you prefer. public void parseDataFile(String fileName){ try{ sourceURL = new URL(fileName); try{ instream = sourceURL.openStream(); } catch(IOException ea){ return; } inFile = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(instream)); try{ int i = 0; inputLines.removeAllElements(); while(inFile.ready()){ inputLines.addElement(inFile.readLine()); i ++; } } catch(IOException ec){ try{ inFile.close(); } catch(IOException ed){} } } catch(MalformedURLException eb){ return; } for(int i = 0; i < inputLines.size(); i++){ s = (String)inputLines.elementAt(i); parseTokens(s); // my routine to parse the tokens. } }