I have a quick question guys and I really hope you can help me because i am about to lose my mind here.

What I am trying to do is enter two points in MapPoint (using Excel and VBA) and then calculate the distance between those two points. Then I want to extract other points (postcodes) which lie on the tour calculated by MapPoint. For example, assume that I am entering two postcodes in route planner, one in London and one in Newcastle. MapPoint will calculate the shortest tour between those two cities but along that tour numerous other points (postcodes) will, quite naturally, exist. Do you have any idea on how I can extract those points?

thank you very much

PS: entering the postcodes and calculating the distance between two points is something that i have already done

A non-programmatic solution consists of the following:
- using the Data Mapping Wizard, create a shaded area map using area of postcodes.
- draw a shape that encloses the area (or the whole country) and export to Excel (delete shape, no longer needed)
- import the postcodes as pushpins
- recalculate the route and draw a shape that traces over the route.
- move postcode pushpins into this shape where the route intersects that postcode (zoom in and inspect)
- when finished, right click on the shape and export to Excel

We can automate this process using a COM Addin, if you require this service.

Thanks a lot for the reply Michael. Unfortunately I cannot afford to pay for any addins so I will try the non-programmatic solution that you have proposed

Michael's solution will not work with the full postcode level (AAnn nAA), but will work down to the level supported by MapPoint (I forget how deep that is - definitely AAnn, but possibly AAnn n). That's a fair number of postcodes! If "within X miles of a postcode centroid" is sufficient then "going through a postcode" could be implemented using straight line distance measuring. Yes a programming solution - if you have zero budget, you'd have to do that yourself (and time consuming if you are not familiar with programming).