Thank you! This seems to have worked, no more ?s in playlist files. One song is still giving me issues, the playlist looks fine in notepad but the song (which has a # in it) does not show up in the portable device. However, since the playlist looks fine both in notepad and in musicbee, I think it is some other issue (akin to the disappearing songs I've dealt with in non ascii variations of M3U) In any case, I'm not sure it is worth worrying about unless there's some easy fix. Thanks again!