I've looked at your document and there is no need for any of this
complication at all. Just use the Replace dialog to Find: ^w and Replace ^t.
No Wildcard needed.

Multiple tabs are recognized as whites space as are the single and multiple
manual spaces. So a single pass does exactly what you need. Once you have
done this, go through the document again before creating the table to
correct the few errors where spaces were missing or an extra space has been
added. These are easy to spot and there are only a few: it will be easier to
correct before conversion than after conversion.

Once you are happy with it, select the list and use the Text to Table
conversion.

If you have missed a mistake (a missing or extra tab) and the table looks
wrong, use UNDO immediately to revert back to the text list to correct the
error before using the Text to Table again.

--
Terry Farrell - MSWord MVP

"geotso" wrote in message
...
then, "Graham Mayor" climbed to the rostrum and said:
Send me a sample of the document to the link on my web site so that I can

you (and everyone) can get it from he http://geotso.com/sample.aspx

check that we are all singing from the same hymn sheet, however in the
meantime try a search for

([0-9]{1,}.)[ ]{1,}([A-Za-z]{1,})[ ]{1,}([A-Za-z]{1,})[
^0160^t]{1,}([0-9])
replace with
\1^t\2^t\3^t\4

with the wildcard option set.

The same "invalid expression" message box