The minimum length is five characters, far as I know. Don't know about max. length. You may use any alpha-numeric characters, and most punctuation and special characters. Case is ignored (D1vC6r = d1vc6r = D1VC6R) so don't bother with mixing upper and lower case letters. Emphasize, *strongly*, that when entering their subscribed addresses that they *must* enter their subscribed addresses, not what they think they are, but what they actually are; [log in to unmask] (what he thinks his address is) is NOT the same as [log in to unmask] (his subscribed address). Only the combination of the *subscribed* address plus password for *that* address will work. If they don't know what their subscribed address is, they can do a QUERY listname. If they then get a "you are not subscribed" response, they contact you to fix it, please (they could do it themselves, if they already have a password for the old address, but explaining all that, and how to do it, is so much trouble that for address changes I just tell them "contact the listowner(s)"). As Pete Weiss pointed out, email archive searches do not require a password, *IF* they are sent from a subscribed address. However, there are not many folk left these days willing to do searching via email, even though it is so easy and convenient (I do all of my LISTSERV searching via email), so I wouldn't worry too much about explaining that. Another thing to keep in mind is that if you have any subscribers who receive list postings just fine, but the LISTSERV administrative stuff is blocked (they cannot receive job outputs, confirmation messages, renewal messages, etc.) they will NOT be able to search password protected archives. They can't get a password because they can't OK the password confirm message, which they never receive. They can't search via email, which doesn't require a password, as the results are sent as LISTSERV administrative mail, which they can't receive. I have yet to talk any of the sites which pass the list postings, but block the LISTSERV admin. stuff into allowing the LISTSERV email through. I sometimes wish, in such situations, that I, as listowner, could assign a password for these subscribers, as they CANNOT get one for themselves. Douglas Winship [log in to unmask]