The winsock is just a control to join to socket together via an IP protocol, there is no built in method that will do want you want, so just make your own.

You could build your own message, think of it as an byte array

Byte 1 = Message_ID (this would be a number) ie 5 could equal a list box item
Byet 2 = Length of following text (the lenght of the string)
Byet 3 = asc first character of the text
Byte n = asc Last char

IE

0x05 List box item
0x05 len = 5
0x67 g
0x65 e
0x6F o
0x66 f
0x66 f

Obverously you would have to write the decode of the packet in the data_arival event

HTH

G