Hi Mats,

there is no fastest method of searching,
as well as there is not fastest method of sorting.
The speed depends on the data and the means that are available,
like amount of data, size of data items, available memory.

One way, without knowing Word's internal way of handling this,
would be, to recursively cut down a document into parts,
and look for the number of listparagaphs in the successive parts.

In theory:
Whole doc listparagraphs.count
if > 1 then
  first half of doc listparagrahs.count
  if > 1 then first quarter of doc listparagrahs.count
...
at nauseam

Whether this results in shorter processing time,
depends on the document's structure.
Might be lightening fast,
if there is only 1 listparagraph to be found,
might be a complete waste of time, if all
paragraphs are listparagraphs,
at the other end of the spectrum of possibilities.

To the best of my knowledge.