Remember: you are entering your messages in the format of your particular Email software. When messages go over the Internet, the messages are converted into a common format. When they arrive at the destination, they are then converted into the format of the receipient's Email software. So during all this conversion, non-standard characters like the Umlauts are not consistently converted. The convention normally used in Germany to represent the Umlauted vowels (when you cannot type Umlauts) is to drop the Umlaut and add an "e" after the base vowel. This yields: ä (Umlaut "a") = ae ö (Umlaut "o") = oe ü (Umlaut "u") = ue and then there's the ß (ess-zet) character that looks like a Greek beta that equates to a double "s" = ss So now you understand why Köhler is often spelled as Koehler (also in Germany). In the States, Köhler is usually anglicized to Koehler or Kohler (and Müller becomes Mueller or Muller). don Except when the message I sent you comes back to me, the umlaut now looks like the division sign????? >>> Gary Kahler <DSU#c#DSU.DSUPO#c#kahlergw@nasni.navy.mil> 06/25/98 03:47pm >>> Hi Leslie, If you hold down the "ALT" key and then type 148 on the number pad, and then let go of the "ALT" key, you should get you umlaut. K÷hler. Gary KAHLER