Struth! Why don't Quark just leave things alone? I don't know the answer to your question because I'm still on Quark 4. Quark 3.2 was perfectly good, so if you have a copy, then load it. It needs OS 9, but I think OS X launches it automatically if you select 3.2 from the dock. Otherwise, delete your Quark preferences file, restart, and see what happens, but don't blame me! As for automatic text boxes, the beauty of older Quark was that it assumed nothing! You could set your prefernecs for every new document. Good luck.