I also probably should have mentioned in my first posting that the 999 is
a general value and is there to protect against longish text entries... it
makes sure all characters (up to a maximum of 999) are examined. If the
text/number/text entries being processed are known to be no more than,
say, a maximum of 20 characters long, then 20 can be substituted for the
999.

.... although to protect against row deletions, the number should be larger
than the maximum number of characters to be processed (using some reasonable
cushion).

Rick