For Tom's code to work you're going to need to read the text file into
a worksheet (each line into a new cell), then run Tom's code, then
write the cells back into the text file.. The code for that should be
pretty easy to find on the newsgroup here (just do a search for it).

Tom Ogilvy wrote:
Sub AABB()
For Each Cell In Range("A1:A10")
s = Cell.Value
iloc = InStr(23, s, " ", vbTextCompare)
s1 = Left(s, 22)
s3 = Right(s, Len(s) - iloc)
s2 = "***** "
Cell.Value = s1 & s2 & s3
Next
End Sub

--
Regards,
Tom Ogilvy

"adiacc" wrote:

Hi my 1st post so I hope I make sense:
I have strings of data like the EG below
000000000000 0000 000 Andrea xxxx 222 3333
000000000000 0000 000 Louise xxxx 222 3333
So what I need to do is change the names to ***** the names can be different
but the field is always the same number of characters and in the same
location in the line
The file is a TXT file.

Any idea?
Thank you
Andrea