Thank you very much Sam and rlv, it has worked a particular treat!
i am working on using input boxes becuase one time i ended up with 20 scripts for the same macro and that was a bit of a night mare.
So the input box is very useful to me
However onto another inexplicable problem has popped up out of memory i only had 2 sheets in my workbook - better delete some of my handy macros as per my coding style not the most efficient - i cluttered it all up trying to solve this problem
thank you for the code and great explanations folks and enjoy the great weekend
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