A house move and rejig of some of my IT bits seemed to have unsettled .Text and I finally got round to sorting it. Anyway...moving along...

Spence has a very good article on reasons why you don't go messing with underlying implementations and undocumented API's. I couldn't agree more. You just end up delivering fragile systems to your customer and when the next hotfix, SP or upgrade comes along the rod for your back arrives a-knocking at your door. If the functionality ain't there in the API then let the vendor know and live with it until it does.