>    What I'm trying to do is to read a reasonably large amount of text (a
> letter) that has been stored in HTML format in a database field.  The
> ultimate Wordmerge areas in that text will be marked at this point as
> <<FirstName>>, <<Address1>>, <<FirstName>> perhaps again, etc.  I need to
> read the HTML formatted text from the database field, replace the pseudo
> WordMerge specifications with real WordMerge commands so that later
> substitution of data can occur, and then save the document as a standard
> Word document with of course the WordMerge fields residing in the
> appropriate locations within the letter.  My particular question is
instead
> of using the sql resultset to determine whether a Find will succeed, how
can
> I determine whether a Find worked programmatically (i.e. I know the
> potential extents of WordMerge areas that may ultimately need to be done,
> but each letter may have a different combination, thus I can't expect a
> specific WordMerge field to be needed for a particular letter)?  Oh, and
if
> anything else looks goofy(scientific term), let me know. :-)
> .
> .
> .
>     Dim wrdApp As Word.Application
>    {assume that smailmergefields is a prepopulated array with all the
> potential WordMerge fields for a particular document}
>     'perform query to obtain letter of current interest
>     sSql = "SELECT txtLetterContent FROM ...
>     Set rSql = oCon.Execute(sSql)
>     'open up skeletal document that only contains one bookmark called
Letter
> (marks the location where entire letter will be placed)
>     wrdApp.Documents.Open FileName:="C:\Docs\skeletal.doc",
> Format:=wdOpenFormatHTML
>     wrdApp.Selection.GoTo What:=wdGoToBookmark, Name:="Letter"
>     'store entire letter in Word document as obtained from the database
> field
>     wrdApp.Selection.TypeText    rSql!txtLetterContent
>     istart = 1
>     'Loop through all potential placeholder phrases and replace dummy mail
> merge syntax with the actual mail merge commands
>     For i = 0 To UBound(smailmergefields) - 1
>         With wrdApp.Selection.Find
>              .Wrap = wdFindContinue: .Forward = True
>              sdummymailmerge = "<<" & smailmergefields(i) & ">>"
>              bkeeplooking = True
>              'continue looking for a specific placeholder phrase until it
is
> no longer found (may be multiple instances, e.g. 3 instances of
> <<FirstName>>)
>              While bkeeplooking
>                    'determine ahead of time whether a Find command will
> actually locate this sequence of characters when I try it next
>                    ifoundat = InStr(istart, rSql!txtLetterContent,
> sdummymailmerge)
>                    If ifoundat Then
>                       'go to dummy phrase, delete phrase, add mailmerge
> field at cursor location, then move forward a little so we don't find same
> thing again
>                       'of particular interest here would be a way to know
if
> I had found the text searched for instead of doing the above InStr first
to
> know that
>                       'and also to delete the dummywordmerge with one fell
> swoop instead of character by character
>                       .Execute FindText:=sdummymailmerge
>                       Selection.Delete Unit:=wdCharacter,
> Count:=Len(sdummymailmerge)
>                       ActiveDocument.MailMerge.Fields.Add
> Range:=Selection.Range, Name:=smailmergefields(i)
>                       istart = ifoundat + 2
>                    Else
>                       bkeeplooking = False
>                    End If
>              Wend
>          End With
>     Next i
>     'now that document has had pseudo WordMerge fields replaced with real
> ones, convert the document via Save from HTML to Word format
>     wrdApp.Document.SaveAs Filename:="Myfile.doc",
> FileFormat:=wdFormatDocument,...
>     .
>     .
>     .

> Thanks, Tom.