textArea problem

hi, i need to know how to get the text somone has entered in a text area.

i have tried

textArea.getText()

but that gave me an error saying "cannot find symbol".

here is my code:

EditUpperMenuItem.addActionListener(new ActionListener(){

publicvoid actionPerformed(ActionEvent e){

String text = textArea.getText();

actionUpper(text);

}

});

please help me, thanks

edit: here is the code for the textarea incase thats the problem:

JTextArea textArea =new JTextArea(40, 10);

textArea.setLineWrap(true);

JScrollPane scrollPane =new JScrollPane(textArea);

getContentPane().add( scrollPane );

}

[1029 byte] By [boblettoj99a] at [2007-11-26 18:47:43]