>It just dawned on me what you were saying about this ... you purposely have put the "preserve" syntax in your XML, correct? Well, of course you'll get the column in Excel, because that's the purpose of that syntax ... to preserve white space (the syntax is actually xml:space="preserve"). If you didn't purposely put that syntax in there, you must have done something other than a simple DataSet.WriteXml() because that will not use that syntax.

This syntax has been put in there by WriteXml(). This is why I am wondering why it is doing that. The field is a one space length. The WriteXml() will put it like that. The only way to avoid that is to Trim() the loRow("Field1"), for example, and that will do it.