Hi Scott, Didn't see a 'quick answer' in my CF boof ... found a number of interesting links running "read BLOB" through google... http://www.mvps.org/vb/hardcore/html/readingwritingblobs.htm http://www.bitmechanic.com/mail-archives/dbi-users/Oct1998/0029.html http://faqchest.dynhost.com/prgm/dbi-l/dbi-98/dbi-9803/dbi-980301/dbi9803100 0_01659.html http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q210/4/86.asp HTH, RonL. -----Original Message----- From: scott.brady at homeqonline.com [mailto:scott.brady at homeqonline.com] One of the problems I'm running up against is that the system that populates the data (Action Request System) stores text fields as BLOBs (Binary Large OBjects) and when I pull the info from the database, it displays as hexadecimal. So far, no one I've found can tell me if there's a way to convert that to the original text. Does anyone have any ideas on how to turn a BLOB into readable text?