This error is likely to be due to a command that broke and left the punch in CONT status, or to a bug in CP which does the same thing. The punch is spooled NOCONT PURGE after a reader file has been processed, so the former is rather unlikely (unless this is an older version of LISTSERV). Since you did not (could not) provide info on the command executed before this mail was distributed, nor about the CP level of that LISTSERV, I just added a NOCONT option to the SPOOL D TO command in LSVXMAIL. This will cost very little CPU time and will make sure that the problem is due to a CP bug, if it persists. By the way I hope to get release 1.5o out by the end of next week. It is supposed to have full XA support, and I'll make some more changes to define DIST1 --> old distribute code and DIST2 = DISTRIBUTE --> new DIST2 code. This is not so easy as the DIST1 command is not known to vanilla 1.5n - I'll have to make some tests on the server version from PEERS NAMES to use either DIST1 or DISTRIBUTE on inter-server DIST1 jobs, and suchlike. Eric