>>See the changes in the code. What exactly you're doing here? Can you give more info, please?
>
>What I am trying to do is to see if the letters "TOF" are in one of these five fields. That's all. Let me try your suggestions, and thanks Nadya.

In that case (unless you need to know which field contains these letters), the simpler way would be to check

"TOF" $ note1+'*'+note2+'*'+note3+'*'+note4+'*'+note5+'*'

I've added the asterisks in between so you wouldn't get a .t. if note2='START' and note3='OFTEN'.