I'm accessing a SQL Server table using a remote view in VFP. The field contains a email address -- plain text -- but the SQL column is defined as being memo type. When I browse the table and view the contents of the memo field, I see a funny special character appearing between each significant character of the email. The character is a tiny square -- best I can guess it's Unicode (hex) 25A1 or 25AB. If I use SQL Server administrator and issue "SELECT email from customer" I see the actual email address, ready to go. But if I do "SELECT email from rvCustomer" I get a query with the column and Memo or memo appearing in each row cell. If I CTRL+PageDown to open the memo field, I see the email address with the small squares. If I try "SELECT alltrim(email) or trim(email), I only get the first character of the contents of the field.

I even tried to figure out how to effect the equivalent of "SELECT STRTRAN(email,"A","ZZZZ") FROM rvcustomer" to get rid of the little squares to no avail.

Does anyone know what's going on? I called our vendor and he hadn't heard of FoxPro. I think the SQL Server is version 8.