Albert,
I'm on my other machine and just checked VFP7 does have the necessary second arguments to get UTF8 encoding out.
Since VFP9 was just shipped earlier this year it will be it for a while. Ken Levy from Microsoft has said that in June they will be releasing information about the future plans for VFP.
>Thanks for the response - I checked and VFP7 does contain the strconv() function so will give it a whirl. I also need to order VFP9 anyhow....do you know, is there a VFP10 release planned for this year or is VFP9 good for some time?