If you are getting variance like that then it is pretty pointless pursuing incremental gains in speed unless you are running this 10+ times a day. However it is always worth learning more efficient ways of coding.

I don't know why the status bar push isn't working (it does work on my machine) but perhaps you could try other characters. eg
StatusBar = String(50, Chr(151)) & "Macro status: " & shapecount & " of " & AllShapes
StatusBar = String(50, Chr(160)) & "Macro status: " & shapecount & " of " & AllShapes
StatusBar = String(50, "_") & "Macro status: " & shapecount & " of " & AllShapes

My guess is that the problem with the first text box being missed is that the alt text is not EXACTLY correct. A space either before or after the visible text would be enough to skip over it. Try this as a modification to avoid that type of issue
If Trim(LCase(oShp.AlternativeText)) = "shrink" Then

__________________
Andrew Lockton
Chrysalis Design, Melbourne Australia