Hi Bob,



An interesting discussion with MS Tech Support! Unless your copy of Office isn't fully updated, I very much doubt that any MS Tech could actually 'fix' it. For your $99, at best they might give a different workaround (eg coding the filters with vba, which is entirely do-able), but that's not a fix. And, given that it's a software fault (reported elsewhere in discussion groups), you shouldn't be charged for it.

__________________
Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

Hi Paul,
My copy is at the latest fix level, and I couldn't agree more. While the person on the other end of the chat might have been more helpful for an actual "end-user" type question, the responses were sparse, it seemed. Between the $99 charge which would not have changed the release of the software and the somewhat dis-interested tone of the responses, the image of Microsoft as being unconcerned with the actual quality of the product was re-inforced for me. But, the general public has been the beta test group for many years now.

I'm going to test the coding examples that you were so kind to provide and post results. I really appreciate your help!

Best regards,
Bob Charest

Word 2002 (XP) had the bug Bob Charest describes and today I see it again on my shiny new licensed and fully updated copy of Word 2013. My source data is in an Excel spreadsheet.

I've been Bingin' on the Internet but haven't found a solution yet, just workarounds. I appreciate the help from those who have suggested workarounds but I would like the root cause found and fixed. A workaround will only have me wondering "Why did I do this strange thing?" a month from now.