I'm very happy to hear that it helps.

Also in VFP9 you can use FontCharSet property to properly display text on form or in editbox without changing the default language for non-Unicode programs.

Try this code:

_Screen.FontCharSet = 204 &&Cyrillic

lcUtf8 = filetostr( 'russian_utf8.txt' )
lcRussian = strconv( SUBSTR(lcUtf8, 3), 11)

?lcRussian 

WAIT WINDOW "IS it ok?"

lcUnicode = filetostr( 'russian_unicode.txt' )
lcRussian = strconv( SUBSTR(lcUnicode, 3), 6)

?lcRussian 

WAIT WINDOW "IS it ok?"

_Screen.FontCharSet = 1 &&Reset to default value