Frequently, you will have a situation where you store the string representation of an enumerated value in a file or database, and when it is retrieved you have to re-assign it to a variable that is of the enumerated type. You can do this as follows:

public enum MyEnumeratedType
{
     Foo = 0, Bar = 1
}

MyEnumeratedType enumVariable = (MyEnumeratedType) Enum.Parse(typeof(MyEnumeratedType), “Bar”, true);

With all due respect to Anders, this is NUTS!!! I wish there was a simpler way…