Keith,

You don't have to go through as much work as you are. VAL() stops at the first non-numeric character it finds.

? val( "1234 Main" ) && 1234.00000
? val( " 1234 Main" ) && 1234.00000
? val( "POBox 1234" ) && 0.00000
? val( "1234 E 5th" ) && 1234.00000
? val( "1234E5th" ) && 123400000.0000

In the last example E5 means 10^5

>I'm posting this fragment to see if there's
>something obscure that I'm missing about the
>VAL() function.'
>
>THIS CODE basically JUST makes sure that the
>FIRST "word" OF an address IS a numeric VALUE
>greater than zero. Everthing seems TO WORK
>fine until you het the VAL() FUNCTION.