thanks for your time with this. your code was not different to mine except that you used loadMovieNum (ie, target: level) rather than loadMovie (target: clip), which is what my current code does.
so i changed your code to loadMovie to see if it would still work and it does. This means that i now have your files with identical code to mine: but whilst the text as html works when using your files, it doesn't with mine (when loaded into the main movie)!
very confusing! as i say, everything is set up the same: loadMovie code, the new LoadVars() code, the txt file, etc, etc...
the call to load the text was misaddressed: instead of "profile.txt" it should have been "subfolder/profile.txt" because the files were in different folders!
sometimes we can look too closely and miss the bigger picture...
the positive outcome is that p3k's code is working. thanks!