>I have a file with a memo field that has gone bad. I can open the memo file in a text editor and see all the data. It appears that entries for individual accounts are headed with a SOH NUL NUL string. SOH is chr(1). Can anyone give me any help on how to search for this sequence in a file or in a string. Thanks.

If this is a memo field we may have a problem...

Anyway, try this

select myMemo where len(chrtran(lower(myMemo), '1234567890abcdeetc.','')) >0 && Search for any non alpha numeric characters