I know how to programatically change the text that is
displayed in the statusbar, but how do i access the
progress meter (displays during saves and calculations)
with code. I have looked thru the object browser, mostly
in the application object, and havent found any reference
to it. I am guessing that it is accessable via the panels
collection of the status bar but i cant find any
documentation about it.

I am open to other suggestions. with out going in to a lot
of detail, the setup is:

1) user clicks button
2) code executes (duration varies)
3) control is returned to user

i would like some way of informing the user that the macro
is still running and not frozen.