Lost lettering during milling in AutoCad 2002

Hi all,

Quick question, I have laid down several polylines, rectangles and
lettering in AutoCAD 2002 and save it as a .DXF file to be translated
using the MILL.EXE program from MaxNC.

Problem is, any lettering that I put in the CAD drawing is not
showing up after running the MILL conversion! Everything else is,
just not the lettering. It seems as if the lettering is "separate"
from the drawing layer even though I'm only using one layer.

I'm sure I have to "explode" the lettering into PolyLines, but can't
figure out how to do explode the lettering into polylines in ACAD
2002.

I am not a CAD expert, but...

Any help would be appreciated!

Thanks,
Tracy