>>>Naomi,
>>>
>>>Probably you are right and I am wrong, I might be getting confused with some other problem I had in the past related with length of strings when the "reserved" space was not big enough.
>>>
>>>>What exactly the GetData method is doing? Can we just pass an empty string always?
>>
>>I'm not sure myself here.
>
>Many systems I've seen specify the size of the data being returned. We have to provide a space at least as big as the returned value. QuickBooks SDK comes to mind.

I know it's often the case with Windows API functions where you specify cBuffer in advance. May be similar for ActiveX.