Thank you everybody for your answers. Writing Tr{\"a}ger as Thomas suggested works well, but unfortunately, I'm using Mendeley Desktop for the management of my bibtex file and I can't seem to be able to influence the way in which it encodes the special characters. @Mojca: Indeed, it also fails if I just write "Träger" in UTF-8 encoding (however, "Schräger" works just fine. All combinations where the "ä" is at the third place of the word seem to fail.). The error message is similar but slightly different now. The log file shows the following: --------------- system > begin file test.tex at line 3 publications > loading database from test.bbl (test.bbl ! String contains an invalid utf-8 sequence. l.1 \setuppublicationlist[samplesize={Tr Ã06},totalnumber=1] A funny symbol that I can't read has just been (re)read. Just continue, I'll change it to 0xFFFD. ! String contains an invalid utf-8 sequence. l.5 n=1,s=Tr Ã06] A funny symbol that I can't read has just been (re)read. Just continue, I'll change it to 0xFFFD. ! String contains an invalid utf-8 sequence. \doifassignmentelse ...gnmentelse \detokenize {#1} =@@\@end@ \expandafter \se... \dostartpublication ... ->\doifassignmentelse {#1} {\getparameters [\??pb ][k... l.9 \stoppublication A funny symbol that I can't read has just been (re)read. Just continue, I'll change it to 0xFFFD. ) ----------------------- Julian 2011/6/4 Pontus Lurcock > On Fri 03 Jun 2011, Thomas A. Schmitz wrote: > > > But I admit it's not easy to know that, bibtex documentation is a > > real mess > > Patience please! ‘This document will be expanded when BibTEX version > 1.00 comes out’ -- BIBTEXing, February 8, 1988. > > :-) > > Pont > > ___________________________________________________________________________________ > If your question is of interest to others as well, please add an entry to > the Wiki! > > maillist : ntg-context@ntg.nl / > http://www.ntg.nl/mailman/listinfo/ntg-context > webpage : http://www.pragma-ade.nl / http://tex.aanhet.net > archive : http://foundry.supelec.fr/projects/contextrev/ > wiki : http://contextgarden.net > > ___________________________________________________________________________________ > -- Julian Becker Institut für Angewandte Physik, R.123 Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster Corrensstr. 2/4 48149 Münster / Westfalen Tel. 0251 83-3 61 53 Mob. 0151 599 848 29 e-mail: j_beck16@uni-muenster.de "Keep thy heart with all diligence; for it is the wellspring of life."