Under the Window menu there are three items you can use to show or hide the palettes.
- Show/Hide Views
- Show/Hide Snaps
- Show/Hide Sheets (only visible if you are using the Pro)
yes that certainly does help. if I may say so myself I have an incredible ability to overlook the obvious!!! my workaround was to throw out my .plist and then put all my prefs back HA HA!!