I have an animation with a charactor walking into a room, I want him to pick up a box.

how do I accomplish that with out altering the current animation?

That depends. Do you want the character to pick up the box after the walk cycle, or as part of the walk cycle? The latter will require you change your current animation. In either case, for the actual picking up the box portion, you'll want to look into linking and unlinking of props.

it will be a completed different action. I created a key frame and made the body part changes to have him bend and pick up the box.. But when I restart the animation is has him walking in bent over.

This happens quite commonly because a keyframe wasn't created in the appropriate place within the transform layer and pose layers within the timeline. You'll probably need to re-watch some of the basic animation tutorials.

that is a good point.  Where can I find a tutorial on transfer layers?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8ckR43VD6U

Around 3:56 it goes into the process of creating a keyframe, however it does it on the 3D Motion Layer. Actually thoe video is good for coming to grips with animation in CTA2 regardless if it's 2D or 3D...

Thanks very much, look forward to creating some cool projects! 

Hi, did you use the puppet editor for the pick up a box motion? or just the 3d editor? I am working on a similar project too.