Colin,
XMLTOCURSOR() is designed to work with XML created by CURSORTOXML() function or the one similar to it. Use code provided by Vlad to convert some small table to XML and back to cursor to make sure that XMLTOCURSOR() works on your PC. If it does, than your XML file may be not compatible with it and you shoould look at using XMLAdapter or XMLDOM directly.
>=XMLTOCURSOR("c:\ralxml.xml","newxml",512)
>thsi is what i have tried and got the error
>
>msxml3.dll cannot find the object specified
>
>The xml data file i want to impoort from is c:\ralxml.xml
--sb--