Hello helpless in iowa,
I would rather get rid of the message box and use instead a label to get the
attention of the user for example, and I presume that you're using a Userform:
Label2.Visible = True 'alerts the user to enter a numeric value
txtphone.SetFocus
txtphone.SelStart = 0
txtphone.SelLength = 1000
But in the UserForm_Initialize() you have to initialize the Label2.Visible
as False, otherwise it appear when the Userform appears for the first time,
which you won't like.

Swisse