Dear all, I had asked a similar question some time ago and had received a reply from Hans (http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.tex.context/81049), but the method there doesn't work in this case. Working example difficult, hence code snippets, I'm afraid. I process file A.xml. I pull in stuff from file B.xml and store the result as a lua table: for e in xml.collected(xml.load('B.xml'), 'a') do for d in xml.collected(lxml.id(e), 'b') do local sortword = xml.attribute(b, "/", "xml:id", "0") local entryword = xml.text(b, "entry") local translation = xml.first(b, "translation") mytable[sortword] = { } mytable[sortword]["ew"] = entryword mytable[sortword]["tr"] = translation end end so the table contains the xml. The "translation" part contains further nested xml elements. Later, when processing A.xml, I want to retrieve this stored xml and have it processed: local checkword = xml.text(t, "c") local translation = mytable[checkword]["tr"] but whatever I try: lxml.flush(lxml.id(translation)) or xml.cprint(voktable[myword]["tr"]) or xml.cprint(translation) I always get the serialized xml typeset, but not processed. So: how can I get context to process the xml that is stored in the table? All best Thomas