The function mentioned by Ron Barber here: http://lists.runrev.com/pipermail/use-livecode//2011-June/157016.html helps. At least if it is either or... No good results for mixed languages though. local tUni,tAsUTF16 put the selectedText of btn "combo" into tUni put RawDataToUTF16(tUni) into tAsUTF16 *sigh*. Garlic...