I have a VB 6 application (not .NET) which writes data sfdc using the sforce Office Toolkit DLL.  The program hangs when I attempt to insert or update a record where the first character in a field is an ampersand (&.  I was able to duplicate the issue in the Excel connector, so I'm pretty sure this is an issue with the toolkit DLL.  It does not happen if the ampersand is any other position besides the first one.

Is there an escape character I can use, or a routine I can call, to properly encode this character so it doesn't hang up my program?

Here is an example of code that causes the program to hang:

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Note: VB 6 app has a reference to the sforceofficetoolkit v2.0, and a form with 3 command buttons (cmdOK, cmdSearch, cmdUpdate) and 8 textboxes (txtUserName, txtPassword, txtQueryName, txtName, txtBillingStreet, txtBillingCity, txtBillingState, txtBillingPostalCode).

The following is the code for the form:

Option Explicit

Dim oSFDC As New SForceOfficeToolkitLib.SForceSession

Dim qs As SForceOfficeToolkitLib.QueryResultSet

Dim oItem As SForceOfficeToolkitLib.SObject

Dim sSQL As String

Private Sub cmdOK_Click()
    If oSFDC.Login(Me.txtUserName.Text, Me.txtPassword.Text, False) Then

        MsgBox "Login successful"

    Else

        MsgBox "Login failed"

    End If
End Sub

Private Sub cmdSearch_Click()

         oSFDC.Login Me.txtUserName.Text, Me.txtPassword.Text, False

         sSQL = "Select Id, Name, BillingStreet, BillingCity, BillingState, BillingPostalCode from Account where name = '" & Me.txtQueryName.Text & "'"

         Set qs = oSFDC.Query(sSQL, False)

     If qs.Size = 0 Then

         MsgBox "No data found for search criteria."

     End If

    For Each oItem In qs

         Me.txtName.Text = oItem("Name").Value

         Me.txtBillingStreet.Text = oItem("BillingStreet").Value

         Me.txtBillingCity.Text = oItem("BillingCity").Value

         Me.txtBillingState.Text = oItem("BillingState").Value

         Me.txtBillingPostalCode.Text = oItem("BillingPostalCode").Value

         Exit For

     Next oItem End Sub

Private Sub cmdUpdate_Click()

     If Not oItem Is Nothing Then

         oItem("Name").Value = Me.txtName.Text

         oItem("BillingStreet").Value = Me.txtBillingStreet.Text

         oItem("BillingCity").Value = Me.txtBillingCity.Text

        oItem("BillingState").Value = Me.txtBillingState.Text

         oItem("BillingPostalCode").Value = Me.txtBillingPostalCode.Text

         ' *** The program hanges when the .Update routine is executed against the item ***

         oItem.Update

     End If

 End Sub