I am guessing that you are using Win32::OLE? Have a look at the property get's character code conversion page option. You can have the following code pages: CP_ACP CP_OEMCP CP_MACCP CP_UTF7 CP_UTF8. The default code page is CP_ACP, but you could try the CP_OEMCP to modify its character conversion behaviour. I haven't seen your code, so this is just a guess.