Well I'll be @!#*. You are right. I've been running in circles trying to figure out how to write schemas and dtd's and never thought to try the xmltocursor on this piece of data. The sample of course is only part of a much more complex file that has data in mixed forms like that shown (mixed between <>) and also other parts where the data is separated into discrete elements like:

<schedule time=1 display=45 program=xx76578 />
<data>
<data1>xxx</data1>
<data2>XXX</data2>
</data>

Can you give me some help on how to write a schema to deal with this? I'd prefer to do the whole job in VFP if I can.

Thanks for your tip.