Needy person has a problem

Question

Please HELP!
I'm trying to reset the monthlabel to the selected menuItem but i keep getting this ERROR
symbol : variable monthlabel
location: class calendarReminder
monthlabel.setText("January"); // verify that i is the correct index
^
1 error
If you can help as i'm banging my head of the walls.
Many,many Thanks Joe
String[] months ={"January","February","March","April","May","June",
"July","August","September","October","November","December"};
JLabel text, monthlabel;
// Second menu for months.
menu2 = new JMenu("Months of the Year");
menu2.setMnemonic(KeyEvent.VK_M);
menuBar.add(menu2);
// Group of months in JMenuItems
int m = 0;
for(int x = 0; x < 12 ; x++){
menuItem = new JMenuItem(months[m]);
menuItem.addActionListener(this);
menu2.add(menuItem);
++m;
JPanel month = new JPanel();
month.setLayout(new GridLayout(1,1));
monthlabel = new JLabel("", JLabel.CENTER); // **need to change label to current month
month.add(monthlabel);
public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) {
Toolkit.getDefaultToolkit().beep();
String actionstring = e.getActionCommand();
if (actionstring.equals("January")){
JOptionPane.showMessageDialog(this,"You selected " + e.getActionCommand() + " 2002"); // this works for an alert box
monthlabel.setText("January"); // but this is up the wall
thanks again

Answer 1

You don't show all your code, so this is a guess. Presumably the code before actionPerformed is inside another method that you don't show completely, so my guess is that this is a scope issue. Is monthlabel defined global to the class or is it inside another method?