Thanks. Oddly, ^160 does not find hard spaces in my version of Word (EnglishUK, 2003), but ^255 does. I don't know what works with English versions of Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 365. But ^255 does not work with my friend's Dutch version (prob. 2010 or 2013), so I'll try ^160. I'm using the function below, and for English versions will stick with ^s, which seems to be universal to all English versions. I'll deal with other language versions if they crop up.

Function hs () As String
    If Application.LanguageSettings.LanguagePreferredForEditing(msoLanguageIDDutch) = True Then
        hS = "^160"             ' or whatever special character sequence is used in Dutch
    Else
        hS = "^s"
    End If
End Function