Compare the character sets between the two databases. Are they the same?

You might need to change your character set as you have mentioned.

A neat possible work-around to this problem (i believe I ran into this problem also) is to use the IMPORT GUI 'Data Manager' that is provided with Oracle (comes with Oracle 8 toolset). For some reason, the GUI ignores or corrects the character-set problem. When I used the GUI to Import my file, I didn't get the errors I was getting from command line. It is worth a try.

Not sure what tools are provided with Oracle 7. Did they have GUIs with that version? I doubt you could use an 8.0 import/eport manager with a 7.3.2 DB.

You might have to use command line to change character sets.

- Magnus