Cindy, Txt files don't retain any font information so italics, underline, and bold characteristics can't be kept. I thought that I did get a file created in notepad to retain m-dashes, but I tested that because I was thinking that it couldn't. I didn't think there was an ascii character for m-dash. I think it may very well depend on the type of txt file you create. Word can make several kinds, so that should be investigated. If you can't possibly get the txt files to keep m-dashes replace them with 2 single dashes, which is less desirable than m-dashes, but far more accurate than a single dash with or without spaces arround them. Finding the best kind of txt file should also fix the problem of the pagebreaks disappearing. That certainly can be fixed unless the Mac version of Word is really different. .:-) These factors are what make rtf's more desirable than txt's. On another toppic, PageDown in Word only takes you to the next screen of text not to the next page of the document or book. Sarah Van Oosterwijck http://home.earthlink.net/~netentity