OK - I found the problem (but not the solution yet). The problem is that there are Null characters in the file (ASCII 0). I found this out by looking at the file with DOS Debug. Notepad and another editor I have seem to convert these nulls to spaces when reading it in, however the VB Input statement does not do this. I tried doing a Replace on the string variable after the Line Input, but it seemed to be too late - VB already trimmed the string of the Null characters. My next move would be to read the whole file into a string in binary mode, try the Replace on that string (convert Ascii 0 to space), then write the file back out. Reading it back in as a regular Input file should then work. I'll give this a shot when I have a chance, meanwhile, the family is beckoning me to join them watching the basketball game, so I gotta go. I'll check back soon.