Thanks for your insight. I co-opted the bold portion of the coding below --

^13[0-9]{1,}-[0-9]{1,}-[0-9]{1,}

-- and it is really useful; thanks for that.

When I run the macro I still find, however, that the component "^13" in the expression is not being recognized in the content. I have now tested this in Word 2007 and also Word 2003, with the same results.

I created a work-around that does not use "^13" in the above expression, and I believe this may work for most cases. I remain unclear, however, why the expression above is not working when "^13" leads it.

Thanks again,

q.