Harlan,

Thank you for the tips and insight. I will look at the options and give
it a go.

Thai

Harlan Grove wrote:
wrote...
...
I would like to know how to attack this issue the best way. . . .
...

Don't use Excel.

What you describe is simple text file processing. There are much better
tools for this than Excel, using either functions or macros within
Excel. If you're running Windows 98SE, Me, 2000 or XP or Internet
Explorer 5.0 or later, then you have Windows Script Host installed on
your PC. The validation task you describe would require no more than
20-30 lines of VBScript code. If you're running Windows NT4, 2000 or
XP, then you could even do this using batch files. That includes
prompting the user to enter/correct invalid fields and writing the
corrections to replacement text files.