thank you all. it now does what i wanted.

Tom - I want an automated way as only some entries used for making the file
name are already completed - others will be changed in my absence (and i
can't trust people to correct / alter them before saving)

Kathy - I didn't know there were data validation settings for comboboxes on
userforms (and still don't know how to get to them if they are there

Thank you for your help,

Tim

"Kathy" wrote in message
...
Within the design view, check the comboboxe Data
Validation settings.
-----Original Message-----
Hi All,

some help would be gratefully appreciated: i have
written a small piece of
vba to create a file name from a mixture of comboboxes
(userform) and cells
(worksheet), then saves the file (saveas).

it works fine, but i want some automated way of making
sure no 'illegal'
characters are used in those 'boxes / cells (eg, ':'
or '\'). is there a
single instruction that looks for all such charatcers
(that i could then use
in a find-replace or if-then statement?). currently, it
causes an error and
stops the macro or if '\' occurs somewhere in the
string, it results in an
extra directory being formed (named from the contents to
the left of the
'\'), which is at best confusing!

tia,

tim


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