>i am using append from XL8 command to append data from a file created using partially Russian characters. (Font Arial)
>Majority of the file is in English but a few characters are in Russian.
>
>However the Russian characters do not append and i get a series of question marks where the Russian characters should have been.
>
>What should I do ?

You don't have many options

Excel stores its text in UTF-16 ( aka Wide Characters)

Not all chars of the russian/cyrillic code page ( http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/goglobal/cc305144 ) are present in your current code page ( http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/goglobal/cc305145 ). There is no conversion for some chars, hence the question marks