Perhaps an example is the best way to show what I do and don't know
how to do.

Let's suppose I have the plain text "one two three " in a Rich
Textbox.

I know how to take the word "three" and change the color to vbRed and
the font style to bold.  (It's simply a matter of setting
Text1.SelStart, Text1.SelLength, Text1.SelColor nd Text1.SelBold.)  So
far, so good.

What I don't know how to do is add a word at the end without losing
the RTF information in the presently-existing string.

That is, I can add "four " to the end so that the text in the text box
says "one two three four ", but when I do that, the red and bold
characteristics of the word "three" disappear.  The whole string is
now normal black type (no red, no bold). <sigh>

Any help on this would be greatly appreciated.  Thanks in advance.

You're halfway there with the Sel* properties, now look at the one with
Start in it, then work out the length of the text in the RTB and set this
property, then...

regards

Ian

** invalid email address, change dk to denmark

homepage http://www.kingsoft-denmark.com/
Tips & Tricks page http://tips.kingsoft-denmark.com/

Adding stuff to a RichTextBox in this way is not a good idea anyway, because
as the text grows in size it will become increasingly slow. What you need to
do is use the SelText property. This allows you to insert new text into the
existing text without altering any of the existing text or any of its
attributes. You can use this method to add new text anywhere at all within
the existing text, but to add it at the end you might use something like:

RichTextBox1.Text = "This is some text." ' The initial contents
RichTextBox1.SelStart = 8
RichTextBox1.SelLength = 4
RichTextBox1.SelColor = vbBlue
RichTextBox1.SelStart = Len(RichTextBox1.Text)
RichTextBox1.SelText = " Okay."

Your analysis was right on target!.  I was indeed concatenating the
old text and the new text (and I couldn't get it to work, regardrless
of what variations I was using of

  RichTextBox1.Text = RichTextBox1.Text & "some more text"

and/or

  RichTextBox1.TextRTF = RichTextBox1.TextRTF & "some more text").

Your solution works beautifully (you must be a teacher in addition to
being a programmer, because the sample code was just what was needed
to make everything perfectly clear).

I'm very grateful for the help.  It was the only missing piece I
needed for a program I was working on (a study aid to help people
memorize text word-for-word).  Thanks again!