A DOS listing in a comand window returns the question mark character as well.
I will have to find some other way to get these file names into a
spreadsheet. I can do it manually, one file at a time, in Explorer if I use
file rename and copy the filename text without actually changing it, but
there are a lot of files...

"Joel" wrote:

I'm guessing, but I think it really has to do with the operating system and
not Excel. there are regional settings in the registry that determines the
language and Excel rreturns the same values that DOS would return. To help
determine if it is an excel problem or a windows Problem try the following.

Open a DOS window by going to start button - Press Run - In text box enter
exe.cmd and press OK. the enter DIR and your filename. You can change
drives by typing H: and changing folder by typing cd TEMP (you can also use
wildcards like * and ? with cd)

"simonc" wrote:

I want to use the DIR function to extract the names of files in a directory
and write them into a spreadsheet. As the filenames are all in Russian they
are all non-ANSI characters and DIR simply returns a question mark character
for each letter in the file name. Is there a way of getting DIR to read
non-ANSI?

Grateful for advice.