"Howard Kaikow" wrote in message
FYI, .I finally replaced Union with Areas.

Time was cut in about half.

I'd be surprised if it replacing Union with Address alone cut your time in
half, but for sure doing multiple merge's in one go would have helped. I had
some range related code that took some minutes to complete. It was a matter
of chippping away and eventually time was reduced to just a few seconds.
However what was once a few lines became several hundred to do the same
thing.

Tho, I now have to find out the string limits for Areas in each version of
Excel

Len("AA12345:AB12345,") = 16
16 x 16 less one comma = 255

Address limit is 255 in '97 to 2003, up to 16 areas anywhere on the sheet.

I don't know what it is in 2007, probably also 255. However due to increased
sheet size a single area address length can be longer, and the 'safe' number
of areas less.

Regards,
Peter T