Yes I agree that with a little painstaking weeding , all can be restored to it's original state. I'm finding that the more an email conversion has passed back and forth in transport , the more complicated it becomes to unpick. The harder part is restoring shape and coherence to the text during the search and replace procedures. I'm trying really to arrive at a macro that can be applied to any email and give a good result. This may be forlorn , of course , but I'll do my best.