Aranador said: Yah dont worry about the ignorance - as I said, this problem is so vexing that I cant even describe the problem properly, let alone the solution. So, a query does a little bit of parsing of the information that is inside the query. When what is inside the query is a macro, it is kind of like the parser takes the macro call, and expands it out into the full macro within the query, before the program actually executes the query. In this process, certain characters get stripped out, because reasons. By using character substitutions, instead of stripping out characters, this pre execution parse pass instead turns the character substitutions into the required characters, so that when the query is executed, it works. The various tricks for getting around this problem, such as having a 'macro character', or re-working the way you are approaching the problem, are all just 'out of the box' solutions, so are not immediately obvious, but they do make sense eventually. And as I said, I honestly just avoid the problem all together, by using 'chat menu' style buttons and character ability macros, so I know why you're having this problem, I just can't articulate the solution you want - because I dont really know it. Thanks for that,I really appreciate the honest answer...My current "chat menu" macros work just fine, I'm just looking for a more refined way of presenting the characters with combat options...cheers :)