building an xml generator in vb within excel, how can i get the encoding declaration to appear as the first line?

 <?xml version="1.0" 
encoding="ISO-8859-1" ?> 

u can use WriteStartDocument for that encoding
also see this
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/317169

In VB 6.0, you would write the XML Declaration like this:

Dim memory_stream As New MemoryStream
Dim xmlTextWriter As New XmlTextWriter(memory_stream, System.Text.Encoding.UTF8)
' Write the XML declaration.
xmlTextWriter.WriteStartDocument(True)

And if you happen to migrate to VB.Net anytime,  you could use the XMLDocument class's CreateXmlDeclaration method. Sample snippet provided below.

//Create or Load the Xml Document.	
XmlDocument xmlDoc = new XmlDocument();
//Create an XML declaration. 
XmlDeclaration xmlDeclartion = xmlDoc.CreateXmlDeclaration("1.0",null,null);