>I have data, mainly the foxaudit log, which convert into xml just fine but don't convert back to a curso with out an parse error (invalid character)
>
>how does one handle that?? can I use a strtran() or do I need to use the url conversion routin from rick strahl???

If any of the memo or character fields may contain binaries, they need to be marked as nocptran, i.e. binary. Then those will be exported in a CDATA [... ...] block in base64 format, which can then be consumed by VFP again. Alternately, you may try with a different codepage (utf-8?) in the header, but I haven't tried that.