Comments inline. Paula_Stankus@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote: >We ran into a problem in one of our applications where the users would >cut text from a varchar2(2000) field, edit it in Word, > Paula, Microsoft is beyond ISO standards. They have their own "code page" standard which is incompatible with ISO. Microsoft double quotes need not be the same as everybody else's double quotes. Microsoft double quotes come in several colors and cost more. The mauve colored quotes take the least amount of RAM, or so I heard. >then paste it. >The problem was that certain characters like double-quotes apparently >were "unknown" in the default characterset and where stored as upside >down question marks. To get around this my colleague changed the >configuration in the application server files to: > >AMERICAN_AMERICA.WE8ISO8859P1 > > Ah, you've probably had US7ASCII before. There is a difference between 7 and 8 bit codes. In fact, there are 127 of them. >Some questions, if this is a superset for the default then why isn't it >the default? > > Because character set problems sell consulting. -- Mladen Gogala Oracle DBA Ext. 121 -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l