Tony

brill! thanks

I found this. Could it be the case?

To fix the issue, you need to edit your PHP.ini file. If you are on a dedicated server or on a VPS with root access, then you should already know what we are talking about. If you are on a shared hosting or don’t know where PHP.ini file is, then ask your web hosting provider to do this for you.
You need to ask them to set the following values in the PHP.ini configuration:
suhosin.post.max_vars = 5000
suhosin.request.max_vars = 5000

THanks for the fastest reply ever Jan,
I’ll try the second option.
Now I will go back to my self-flagellation ??
thanks

I deactivated woocommerce and that was the problem. thanks