Your reference to 'placeholder text' has been quite misleading; it seems all you're referring to is some boilerplate text in the first cell of a table; in the context of a document using many content controls, where 'placeholder text' has a particular meaning, your use of the same term for something totally unrelated causes confusion. of course, the simple solution in this case would be to actually add a content control with some appropriate 'placeholder text' and/or a suitable title so you can test that instead of the raw cell content.

Frankly, though, you code needs a lot more attention than just that; your unlocking/locking of content controls, for example, is quite unnecessary. For adding table rows with content controls, for example, have a look at:
https://www.msofficeforums.com/word-...tml#post119230. And, for adding entire tables with content controls, have a look at: http://www.vbaexpress.com/forum/show...l=1#post369226

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Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]