finging the length of a string

Use function len.

Len() returns a Long, not Integer.

This will cause a runtime error:

Dim x As Integer
Dim strText As String

strText = Space(&H10000)

x = Len(strText)

Debug.Print x

kh,

I'm not sure how to say this without sounding like a bit of an a****le, so please don't take this the wrong way. The "len" function is a fairly basic VB function, which leads me to believe you are fairly new at the language. In that case I would strongly advise you to buy a programmer's guide. If you go to a decent book shop which has a "computing" section you should be able to find a good book that will help you get over the learning curve. VB is a very nice language, and there's plenty of good work in it, so it would be money well spent.

' you can also return width of a given string in characters
Private Sub Form_Click()
    Me.ScaleMode = vbCharacters
    MsgBox TextWidth("HHHHH")       ' returns 5
    MsgBox TextWidth("wwwww")       ' returns 5
    MsgBox TextWidth("Hello there") ' returns 6.375
End Sub

Good point that Len returns a Long data type, not an integer - though this only becomes an issue when the length of the string exceeds 32,768 characters or so. I don't often hit that limit when using Len()

25 years ago, programmers never thought their code would still be running in the year 2000.

:-o