If you are writting a generic routine or something, and not sure if you are character or numeric, then you could do something like this:

lcSearch_value = alltrim(padr(txtbox.value, 99))

padr will make most data types char

>The content of the control is already in character format, unless it's bound to a different type control source or have a different type assigned in the Value property. Just use TxtBox.Value to do your search.
>
>>When the user enters an alphanumeric string into the txtbox I want to be able to
>>take this value and convert it to a character string for searching