As to learning VBA: sorry for my limited input as I only have occasional small chunks of time nowabouts. You know, the way I originally learned everything about computers was with a guru at my side - a coworker, professor, fellow student, neighbor, member of a user group. Ultimately my competency was sufficient that I could do basically what I wanted, and could *then* be able to live with getting small chunks of info from the googling or forums - e.g. fixing a single line of code. But I have to confess, I HAD to have an expert in order to get cranking on areas I didn't know, whether that was Assembler language, VBA, spreadsheets or databases.

The alternative to that is "Teach Yourself" books. The "in 14 days" or "in 30 days" ones work extremely well for some. That's how I learned Access. OTOH for Foxpro I had a guy that I asked 120 questions per day.

My stance is to invest the time in order to get an excellent result, though I know the world is not always accommodating in that regard.

Here's something else I have been required to do to use code effectively: step through the code with F8 and shift-F8. Watch what happens on each and every executed line. Use the debug window to confirm assignments. I can't give you a full tutorial on this process but urge you to consider books, or better yet, gurus in the room or on the phone, that can develop this skill. That will, I believe, achieve 98% of what you ever want to do in programming.

You can get there in a month of "teach yourself" work, most likely. Or in a day if you have full time real-time access to a guru. Or take a course. That's my best advice.

Hi Ribbons,
I did take your suggestion and am using the step through approach, Thanks

I've been working in excel for many many years, mostly with formula's, drop downs, VLookup and other functions in excel. For the past 3-4 years I've been recording macro's to make things work the way I want. I usually go to the forum when I get stuck and usually can get enough help to get the job done. Your right in a perfect world their would be more time to learn. I don't have a Guru to help and never did. I had to learn on my own spending countless hours over the years to become somewhat knowledgeable. Still have a lot to learn. I also did some Foxpro years ago and that helped some.

I will take Bob's advise and try to spend some time with the VBA documentation.

I appreciate all of your assistance in this project and I'm sure I will have other questions. I have 2 workbooks done and still have to design 3 more. Each one has different criteria. All need to be saved using a macro so the user won't break the original and doesn't have to think too much, I'm sure you know what I mean.

Thanks Again. gbaker

I agree with most of Ribbons' advice, gbaker. My own approach, throughout my life, when I haven't been able to get my employers to pay for a class (and how often does that happen? Good training is expensive, after all), has been to steal slices of time here and there, teaching myself incrementally. So this week I have a new task to perform, and my boss says "now, Bob, I know you like to automate things, but this time we haven't got time for you to write a program; just do it". ("Tom", I complained more than once, "you like me to know all this stuff but you never want me to learn it." He laughed and acknowledged the justice of my accusation—but nevertheless, this time I should just do it.) So increasingly I ignored that directive and spent some time learning something new anyway. If I thought I'd need a day to do something the hard way, but I suspected I could do it quicker if I learned a new tool, then I took an hour or two to get started on that tool. Then, if necessary, I went back to the hard way; but by then I had an hour or two's worth of new information that would make the task go that much faster the next time.

The result now is that I can do things faster and more reliably in several languages and platforms, making me much more valuable to the boss who didn't want to spare the time. So will you, if you keep at it.

I agree with Ribbons; you'll spend all your life learning more (if you don't balk at it), but a month of this sort of self-training will give you a tremendous improvement in your abilities. I don't think a day with a guru will equal it; a guru is nice to have on call, but in my experience he can only give you those critical hints now and then, while the real learning happens while you're struggling and sweating over a difficult problem.