Softquad was of no help. I do not have a service contract but did use this problem (I used to use 2.0) as my one free help ticket. After sending a bunch of sample files, they claimed they were unable to even open any of my sgml/xml files, so they couldn't even start to diagnose my complaint. I gave up and went back to Notetab, with the govt. several hundred dollars poorer for buying me XMetal. john John P. Rees Associate Curator, Modern Manuscripts History of Medicine Division National Library of Medicine 8600 Rockville Pike Bethesda, MD. 20894 (301) 496-8953 Office (301) 402-7034 Fax [log in to unmask] >>> [log in to unmask] 12/19/01 11:14AM >>> I just spent about 2 hours in Notetab painstakingly doing find and replace commands for all the special characters in a finding aid full of foreign names. The first go through I came back to the file to see that they'd all disappeared and I assumed I'd forgotten to save the file or something. When they disappeared a second time, I realized that XMetal, which I often use to check for and correct errors, is stripping out all the special characters when I reload the file in Notetab. I checked the list archives and noticed that John Rees sent a message about this in the summer. John, did you get any feedback about it or does anybody know why this happens or have a cunning plan to circumvent the problem (apart from not using XMetal obviously) Thanks, Stephanie Stephanie Ashley Project Archivist Archives of American Art Smithsonian Institution 202-275-1672 [log in to unmask]