k so what is happening is that .net does a html encode that's why you see the & + amp + ; in your html, so for that to work you will need to deal with the html generation of the drompdownlist yourself, so you will need to create a class that inherits from the dropdownlist and then use that class on your pages.

>The source code shows values as & + amp + ; + nbsp + ; + &. (I added those plus signs here otherwise UT does not show the entities). That is, .NET inserts the & amp to show the value as literal and, obviously, this is not what I want.
>
>>Dimitry I tested on plain HTML Code so if u saying that in the .net combo didn't work, did you try to do a right click view source on the hmlpage that was generated and see what html .net had generate?
>>
>>>Yes, but you are not replacing spaces with the string "nbsp" here, right? That is, try to create a string of empty spaces. Then replace the empty spaces with the "nbsp" and set the value to an HTML control. Unless I don't understand something, you will see literal "nbsp" strings.
>>>
>>>>Testing the HTML looks like it works fine
>>>>
>>>>this is the html code:
>>>>

>>>><select name="test"><option selected value="1">test spaces          10 spaces</option><option value="2">test spaces          10 NBSP</option></select>
>>>>

>>>>the 2nd option instead of spaces has 10 & nbsp; and it shows ok on the html dropdown list.
>>>>
>>>>>Alexandre,
>>>>>But it does not work exactly as you are saying. The reason I posted this question was I was trying your suggestion on the dropdownlist (last Friday). But the dropdownlist shows values of "nbsp" and not the space as we exact. That is when I try .Replace(" ","nbsp;") or .Replace(" "," ") the literal value is set in the dropdownlist.
>>>>>
>>>>>>Dimitry all depends on where you are using that, i.e. if you use that on a textbox.text then you will see the value and not the space, while if you use it on a dropdownlist item you will see the space and not the string, so as you can see all depends where you are using it.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>>I need to figure out how to set a value of the HTML entity NBSP ( Ampersand + NBSP + Semicolon) into a string so that the browser will interpret it as an HTML special character and not a literal character.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>For example, if I do
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>

>>>>>>>string mystreen = "&"+ "nbsp" + ";" ;
>>>>>>>

>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>The browser will show this string literally. But this is NOT what I want.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>Thank you for any suggestions.