Verify output string that contains html elements

Hi,
I an trying to verify the following string:

The file could not be accessed. Try one of the following: • Make sure the specified folder exists. • Make sure the folder that contains the file is not read-only. • Make sure the file name does not contain any of the following characters: < > ? [ ] : | or * • Make sure the file/path name doesn't contain more than 218 characters.

I can handle the pipe "|", by adding an escape character. But i am not able to handle the < > characters since they are html elements.

I've tried
1) Escape characters ex: \< \>
2) ASCII values & #60; & #62;
3) & #60; & #32; & #62;
4) \& lt; \& gt;

None of the ablove works. Could someone please suggest a solution?