Wow this was certainly informational. I am sure you thought of this solution but I will post what I would do so others reading this forum can see.

I don't think there is a way to get just the integer value from a name since I believe a name is always a string. This can be verified by trying a Shape Name. I tried entering a shape with the name 6 but it still goes to "6". I think that names have to be strings so they can be referred to in any MS program. Similar to if you use a mid formula on group of numbers it now becomes a string and you have to add 0 to it to bring it back to a number. Good ol' data types.

Here is the solution I would suggest that you could put at the beginning of your Sub and then you can use the same variable name throughout your code.

By the way this same thing can be achieved using mid and Cstr, or replace and + 0 it looks like there are lots of ways but it does not look like a name can have just a number value since it will always add on that equals sign to make it a string.

If anybody else finds out different please let us all know.

Thanks