Borate complexation was used to make possible the separation of disaccharides by capillary electrophoresis with indirect detection. A high borate concentration did not affect the indirect detection sensitivity in as negative a way as predicted previously. The concentration sensitivity for sucrose was determined to be 2 mM at the borate concentration of 200 mM in running electrolyte. The newly introduced background [corrected] chromophore, p-nitrophenol, allows the monitoring of the separation process in a visible range at 400 nm. This also enables the indirect detection of UV-absorbing compounds in complex mixtures in which they would be impossible to detect with a UV-absorbing background [corrected] chromophore.