I've got a very similar scenario to the one described in this post. It describes how to load the contents of a file that contains properties & items, making sure they're resolved as part of the process. I'm doing the same thing except writing the contents away to another text file (generally .ini file). In short I'd start by importing a project / propertygroup which contains this text: ; ----------- [heading] setting1=$(FirstValue) setting2=$(SecondValue) setting3=list;of;values;delimited;by;semicolons setting4=bla bla bla ; ----------- & hopefully write it away to a new .ini file containing the following: ; ----------- [heading] setting1=value resolved by msbuild setting2=another value resolved by msbuild setting3=list;of;values;delimited;by;semicolons setting4=bla bla bla ; ----------- Only problem is that some files will contain semicolons. I can live without comments, but they're also used as part of values e.g. in lists. This is the result of using the WriteLinesToFile task. The semicolons are treated as escape characters & result in new lines, so the value of 'setting3' in the above example would be split over 6 lines. Is there a way around this without implementing my own task? Thanks in advance for the help!