Thank you, Mr. fumei, for your fine effort, and I especially thank the useful and productive contribution by the comebacker. I am short on time but later I will try to embrace the improvements accompanying the "deversitalization" achieved by your code slicing.

Indeed I have very poor knowledge of the Word object model and posted this to aid my understanding and figuratively cry out for help (and share the routine, or at least the framework, and fix mine up). Perhaps that help's coming at some point. The "Gates" variables demonstrated just how illogically Word VBA behaved and we may never know why it did. Believe me, it was frustrating and I wish they weren't required. That's okay; I knew it was demented and accept that there may be no explanation. Nonetheless, I am very impressed at how you were not intimidated to actually explain the vagaries of the object model in the code; nay, you demonstrated that one can ignore those fallacies by stripping down the code and functionality! Good one! Then buttressed by expression that O.P. is deluded and blames it on Gates! And that he didn't plan and has no structure! Then explaining logical structural chunks like I actually USED - duh. And telling me that I didn't and needed to use underscores! Wow, you scored big.

I thought that I expressed contrition in the original post and asked for help. I can see that there is value in your post and I'm sure that we'll all benefit. In particular, you actually made good points on how a decent programmer can expand the code. No doubt, there's someone out there (that doesn't suffer from not being laid) that will jump on that idea and expand the code as such. When I have time, I'll take a crack as well. And uhhhh, I believe the message boxes, if statements and indenting make the desired functionality excruciatingly obvious, but maybe my structured programming training was deluded. If anyone else doesn't get it, I'll be happy to explain the "design."

Oh, and on the deluded structure/design subject, I know you're dying to show off what great textbooks you've already conquered, and you might even know a Zen that I haven't read. Care to share your favorite recommendation (links work too)? We'll all benefit. The webmistress may benefit as well if it's not too overwhelming (She can fight, but she's gonna code, albeit perhaps kicking and...)

In the spirit of the site I'm through with sarcasm on this now and I'd like to both receive a good routine and share it. Bring on the intelligent and constructive advice.