Thank you very much. Your answer gives me some hope!

I apologise for my lack of clarity: that my VBA proficiency is really low is possibly quite an understatement.

The idea would be to have multiple search operators. These could be in a separate file, of course, such as a workbook or a text file, whichever is easier. The workbook to be created could be a new one or an extant one, whichever is easier, again. There is no real problem in merging them later, if need be. The only caveat is that the search would have to be carried out on some 400 Word documents.

Is this any clearer? Thank you so much!