The first thing I'd be inclined to do in situations like this is parse the incoming records into something more useful, xml, if there aren't going to be too many of them, or Access or SQL
That way, you can search/seek over them much easier
Parse them with a
RegEx[
^], for example, then create an xml doc say ..
<file>
<record num="20120614"" serial="12345" name="Joe Somebody" special="@647" other="12345000" />
...
...
</file>
Then you can use
XML and XMLPath[
^] to search
In this instance it would be something like
\\record[@special='@647']
Just noticed you're using VB6, so those two links are
this[
^], and
this[
^], respectively
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