Use:

   Dim Found As Boolean
   Found = False
   Selection.HomeKey wdStory
   Selection.Find.ClearFormatting
   With Selection.Find
       Do While .Execute(findText:="SearchString", Forward:=True, _
           MatchWildcards:=False, MatchCase:=True, Wrap:=wdFindStop) = True
           Found = True
           Selection.Delete
       Loop
   End With
   If Found = False Then
       MsgBox "SearchString does not appear in the document."
   End If

Alan,

If you must use Selection then use something like this:

Sub Scratchmacro()
Selection.Find.ClearFormatting
    With Selection.Find
        .Text = "searchstring"
        .Replacement.Text = ""
        .Forward = True
        .Wrap = wdFindContinue
        .Format = False
        .MatchCase = False
        .MatchWholeWord = False
        .MatchWildcards = False
        .MatchSoundsLike = False
        .MatchAllWordForms = False
    End With
    If Selection.Find.Execute Then
        Selection.Delete Unit:=wdCharacter, Count:=1
    Else
      MsgBox "String not found"
    End If
End Sub

If you would rather use a range then use something like this:

Sub ScratchmacroII()
Dim oRng As Word.Range
Set oRng = ActiveDocument.Range
With oRng.Find
 .ClearFormatting
 .Text = "searchstring"
 If .Execute
     oRng.Delete
   Else
     MsgBox "String not found"
   End If
End With
End Sub

The .Execute method returns a boolean result, True if it found what you asked
for and False if not. So you can write the end of the macro like this:

  If Selection.Find.Execute Then
      Selection.Delete Unit:=wdCharacter, Count:=1
  Else
      MsgBox "Sorry, I could not find this string"
  End If

By the bye, I don't understand why you have Unit:=wdCharacter, Count:=1 in the
Delete statement.

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP        FAQ: http://word.mvps.org
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so all may benefit.

Thanks for the information and suggestions to Doug Robbins, Greg Maxey,
and Jay Freedman. I have been able to cobble together something workable
for me.

Jay asks:
"By the bye, I don't understand why you have Unit:=wdCharacter, Count:=1
in the Delete statement."

Jay, this is going to sound a bit weird.

I am a medical transcriptionist, and the doctors sometimes have a bit of
canned speech to put in, something like boilerplate text or Word's text
insert. These are called "normals" in our industry. There will be places
in it for us to fill in information. For example, a sentence might be
something like "we prepped the patient's ____ side" and we put in left
or right. By convention, stemming back years ago when all medical
transcriptionists used WordPerfect, a jump code of two question marks
was used, like this ??. An insert may have half a dozen or more of these
goodies.

Yes, I know about bookmarks. WordPerfect had bookmarks too. But we have
to work with what our employer gives us.

There is a macro attached to a shortcut key that searches for these
"jump marks." Recently, our hospital changed transcription software
vendors, and the old vendor had a macro that searched for the jump mark,
deleted it, and left the cursor where it had been. If there was no jump
mark, the cursor did not move.

The new vendor's macro simply searches for the jump mark but does not
delete it. And if one tries to record a macro that jumps to the jump
mark and deletes it, the conundrum is what you would expect. If the
search failed, the macro deletes the one character under the cursor. To
have a macro that actually does what we need, it must be written instead
of recorded because the logic of the task dictates there must be some
sort conditional branching...if found, do this, if not, do that.

Because of your and the others' kind assistance, I was able to make a
macro that performed much more as I wished.

I hope this answer was not too long-winded. But you did ask. When I
posed the question, I tried to make it more general so the answer would
be more generally helpful to others browsing this forum, and it was a
good learning experience for me.

Thanks again to those who answered my question. This forum is a
wonderful resource for those of us just beginning to figure out VBA.

Regards,

Alan Stancliff