Graham
You are the man!

thank you again
I still have one problem
all is well until I get to the end at
Code:
oNewDoc.SaveAs strNewName, addtorecentfiles:=False
if I comment out On Error that line of code spits out this error code
Run-time error 6015:
A table in the document has become corrupted.
There are tables in the doc and they are not needed in the new doc they are before and after search strings
the result is the new document or documents will not close, if I keep going in the code all looks good in the new doc except for a empty table that could go away it is not needed.
I am looking for solutions on-line as well
Again thanks Jim