Hi g00se and pbl,
Thanks for the feedback. g00se your code worked but I sure don't understand it. I glanced at my friend's text book and about half of what you coded isn't in there....no wonder she failed I appreicate the code I will have to study it and look some stuff up so I can get somewhat of a grasp as to what's going on.

pbl I understand what you are saying , I kind of got that from the text, which is why if I couldn't understand if I put conPanel5.remove(label); didn't work. From what I'm gathering from the text once the Container con = getContentPane(); is added all actions go through the con rather then the JFrame. Am I not understanding correctly?

Sorry in the delay, lost power for about two hours.

PBL and g00se, Thanks for all your help...but I give up. I see now why my friend failed Java(I borrowed her book thinking it can't be that hard) I was doing pretty good til I hit the Swing/GUI chapters. But if I am reading this book correctly, since the Jpanels are in a ContentPane I should still beable to use framePanel5.remove(label) or am I reading this wrong? When I do this it errors out say cannot find symbol, I also tried conPanel5.remove(label) and get the same thing. Guess I should be happy I got as far as I did

Hi gOOse,
Sorry, I thought I had described my goals. My goal is to have a Jframe with JPanels(I made 6), A JButton that when clicked will move the JLabel around to a new JPanel. I have tried several Layouts, but went with the GridLayout as I can sort of determine where my JPanels are(3 rows,2 colunms). My ultimate goal is to click the button and have the label move to a different panel each time, six panels - six moves. I have tried removing the label from one panel and adding to another, setBounds(of which now my label disappears), setLocation(which seemed to just move the label to a different location within the panel it's in).

OK, I'm still not getting this.... When I setBounds() my JLabel just disappears. I think I may not be setting bounds correctly. I even tried to set the JLabel setVisible(true) after JButton is clicked. I thought maybe the JLabel was being positioned under the JPanel.

import javax.swing.*;
import java.awt.*;
import java.awt.event.*;
public class JMovingFrame extends JFrame implements ActionListener
{
	private final int WIDTH = 350;
	private final int HEIGHT = 400;
   JButton button = new JButton("Please click ");
	private int numClicks = 0;
	JLabel label = new JLabel("Smile ");
	public JMovingFrame()
	 {
	  super("J Moving Frame ");
	  setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
	  JPanel panel1 = new JPanel();
	  JPanel panel2 = new JPanel();
	  JPanel panel3 = new JPanel();
	  JPanel panel4 = new JPanel();
	  JPanel panel5 = new JPanel();
	  JPanel panel6 = new JPanel();
	  Container con = getContentPane();
	  con.setLayout(new GridLayout(3,2,2,4));
	  con.add(panel1);
	  con.add(panel2);
	  con.add(panel3);
	  con.add(panel4);
	  con.add(panel5);
	  con.add(panel6);
	  panel6.add(button);
	  button.setLocation(340, 380);
	  button.addActionListener(this);
	  button.setToolTipText("Click this button ");
	  panel5.add(label);
	  label.setLayout(null);
	  setSize(WIDTH, HEIGHT);
	 }
	public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e)
	  {
	  label.setBounds(100, 300, 150, 50);
	  label.setVisible(true);
	  }	
	public static void main(String[] args)
	 {
	  JMovingFrame frame = new JMovingFrame();
	  frame.setVisible(true);
	 } 
}

I see now that programming is not my strong point. PBL, I tried to figure out the GridBagLayout and was so lost..... I finally went with the GridLayout as I can kind of determine where my JPanels are. But everything I try to put in to move the JLabel doesn't work. It does move but not to a new panel. It seems as if it's just moving around the one JPanel Is this what you meant by most other layouts ignore specified position. Is it possible that I need to set the layout to the Jpanels rather then the container? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

import java.awt.*;
import java.awt.event.*;
public class JMovingFrame extends JFrame implements ActionListener
{
	private final int WIDTH = 350;
	private final int HEIGHT = 400;
        JButton button = new JButton("Please click ");
	JLabel label = new JLabel("Smile ");
	public JMovingFrame()
	 {
	  super("J Moving Frame ");
	  setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
	  JPanel panel1 = new JPanel();
	  JPanel panel2 = new JPanel();
	  JPanel panel3 = new JPanel();
	  JPanel panel4 = new JPanel();
	  JPanel panel5 = new JPanel();
	  JPanel panel6 = new JPanel();
	  Container con = getContentPane();
	  con.setLayout(new GridLayout(3,2,2,4));
	  con.add(panel1);
	  con.add(panel2);
	  con.add(panel3);
	  con.add(panel4);
	  con.add(panel5); con.add(panel6);
	  panel6.add(button);
	  button.setLocation(340, 380);
	  button.addActionListener(this);
	  button.setToolTipText("Click this button ");
	  panel5.add(label);
	  setSize(WIDTH, HEIGHT);
	 }
	public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e)
	  {
	  label.setLocation(20, 10);
	  }	
	public static void main(String[] args)
	 {
	  JMovingFrame frame = new JMovingFrame();
	  frame.setVisible(true);
	 }