Greetings,

I am trying to isolate a repetitive sequence of numbers that appears at the beginning of each paragraph in numerous records.

Similar sequences appear within the text of each paragraph, but I have no interest in those.

This --

[0-9]{1,}-[0-9]{1,}-[0-9]{1,}.

-- identifies the sequence at the beginning of each paragraph, but the pattern sometimes appears within the text as well (i.e., the operative sequence, followed by an immediate period).

I have tried --

^13[0-9]{1,}-[0-9]{1,}-[0-9]{1,}.

-- but Word does not "like" this pattern. One would think that it should return results, but it does not.

What if anything can be used in place of "^13" to limit this wildcard search so it only hits upon the number sequence at the beginning of a text paragraph?

Thanks for your kind attention.

q.