In the excellent book EXCEL 2003 VBA (WROX, ISBN 0764556606) the autors describe a method for finding the last row (or column) in a worksheet (p 422).

It goes as follows:

Dim realLastRow as Long
Range ("A1").Select
On Error Resume Next
realLastRow= Cells.Find("*",Range("A1"), xlFormulas,xlByRows,xlPrevious).Row

The code works without a flaw in XL2003 and XL2002.

But, two questions:

1. The code fails in XL2000 (at least on my system) although the documentation for the Find method is not different for the different versions. Has somebody a clue why this is so?

2. I understand that the code snippet starts from the first row and wraps around the worksheet. But I don't truely understand the "*" part of the statement. Does "*" has a special meaning in the context of the Find method? Something akin to a wild card? What if I have to look for a real asterisk? ""*"" ?