pl/sql, excel, xml, utf-8 data - excel refuses to show data

Hello

I try to open excel with data in xml format. The problem is, that if my data consists any utf-8 spesific characters (like scandinavian characters found in ISO-8859-1 or ISO-8859-15 for example) excel refuses to show the data.

I open the excel by calling owa_util.mime_header from pl/sql procedure as follows:
owa_util.mime_header
( ccontent_type => 'application/vnd.ms-excel' );

after this, i naturally tell excel the necessary information, like <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> and <?mso-application progid="Excel.Sheet"?> etc, and describe document properties, declare used styles, open worksheet, table and rows, cells, data. all opened and closed in correct order. but whenever ie. scandinavian charaters are present excel inoforms that "problems came up in the following areas during load: Table". when scandinavian characters are removed from text, everything works perfectly.

so to me it looks like the problem lies with character encoding - but shouldn't first line (<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>) take care of that?

does anyone have any idea how to work this thing out? i'm starting to feel really frustrated with this problem. i would really like to be able to solve this thing without having to change data structures (data is stored in "normal" tables) with the approach i am currectly having. if this is not possible, i have to choose another approach and abandon the code i have written for this purpose.

really appreciating any advice and help,

• mira