>Are the weird characters always the same? And what are they? And would they ever be in the actual data?
>
>You could fix the file as a whole - let's say the characters are all Chr(255) and chr(255) wouldn't ever be real data
>
>

StrToFile(StrTran(FileToStr("weird_file.txt"), Chr(255)),"weird_file_clean.txt")

>[i'd actually put it to a cleaned file and use that, to be on the safe side, and follow up with the client if necessary]
>
VFP does not recognize these characters. When the export file is open in VFP with MODI COMM, they appear as little squares.

>>TIA
>>
>>Ed