Odd square characters

Does anyone know how to get rid of those odd looking rectangular-squarish characters in text strings?

On active layer I have paragraph text that I wish to process using vb string functions. But, when I do something like:

Dim sTemp As String
sTemp = s.Text.Story.Characters.All

sTemp is fill with a string of printing and non-printing characters represented by "[]" rectangles.

I assume they're printing instructions (new line, new paragraph, spacing) and I need to convert string to ASCII, but I don't know how to get that done.

Thanks

p.s. What an awesome forum!

[wOxxOm]

I would replace formatting codes by builtin VBA 'replace' function

s=Shape1.Text.Story.Text
s=replace(s,vbCr," ")
s=replace(s,vbLf, " ")
s=replace(s,chr(11), " ") 'softreturn

'.......or in one line:
s=replace(replace(replace(Shape1.Text.Story.Text,vbCr," "),vbLf, " "),chr(11), " ")

Thank You!

The code above removed most characters, but there was still a few that needed to be identified before I could get rid of them. The following code accomplished that:

sBadCharacter = Mid(st, 27, 1) ' This gets the twenty-seventh character, which was the bugger!
sBadCharacterNumber = Asc(sBadCharacter) ' This tell me the character number

Now, put this in the removal lines...
st = Replace(st, Chr(sBadCharacterNumber), " ") or

st = Replace(st, Chr(9), " " )

[Alex]

Well, if you know that it's the 27th character that is a problem, you can easily replace it directly:

Mid(st, 27, 1) = " "