Are we to assume your ".placeholdertext = nothing" is the result of having used ".SetPlaceholderText , , """ somewhere? If so, that won't produce an error with the above code; neither would leaving the default placeholdertext in-situ.
Note also that, instead of "If .Range.Text <> .PlaceholderText Then" you could use "If .ShowingPlaceholderText = False Then"

It's not apparent to me where the error is occurring. You might do well to insert some message boxes into the code to return the values of your variables and text at various points so you can discover at what point in the process the code falls over.

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